Barosa Island Spaceport

Barosa Island, New Canton

Prefecture VI, The Republic

9 October 3134

Every radio in the Barosa Island Spaceport had been tuned to the emergency frequency, listening to the desperate distress calls from the Duke’s DropShip. Captain Gus Clancy was hearing it, and watching it, magnified on the viewscreen on the bridge of the Excalibur–class spherical DropShip Tyrannos Rex.

He leaned back in his chair, hearing its familiar squeak—the worn leather of the armrests soft under his calloused fingers, and looked around the bridge. His navigator, helmsmen, and flight engineer sat quietly at their respective stations, eyes locked on the doomed ship. He knew they were with the other crew in spirit, and when it crashed, part of them would die with it, too.

That was the bond all spacefarers shared. Clancy also felt it, more so perhaps, since he’d spent much of his childhood on a Union–class DropShip much like the one he was watching now.

The bridge of Clancy’s vessel towered more than a hundred meters above the launch apron. He could see clearly out into the gulf, see the Union’s thrusters as they failed one by one, watch the captain try desperately to keep the craft under control. It was a DropShip captain’s worst nightmare, a ship that could neither fly nor land, stuck deep in the maw of the bitch called gravity.

The Union’s captain had made a good show of it, Clancy thought, tried every trick that Clancy could think of. But it wasn’t enough, and in the end time and gravity had to win.

The crash was a terrible thing. The resulting wave swamped miles of shoreline, sweeping away blue-collar vacation homes, fishermen’s shacks, and low-rent hotels as though with a great broom. He could only imagine the public outcry, the calls for new flight patterns, increased launch safety, or maybe even absurd suggestions that the cargo spaceport be closed.

It didn’t matter to him, though. Very shortly, Captain Clancy and the Tyrannos Rex were leaving New Canton, cargo holds empty. Pockets, too. He didn’t expect ever to be back.

The voyage had turned into a bitter disappointment—one that might cost him his ship. The government had declared his scheduled cargo of manufacturing tools “war materiel,” impounded it, and given him twenty-four hours to leave the planet.

A huge cloud of steam boiled off the gulf, exposing pieces of wreckage that dotted the water. The waves were receding, and he could see the flashing lights of rescue vehicles winking as they drove toward the stricken coastline, emergency helicopters swarming like mosquitoes.

He should leave. The ship was fueled and ready to lift. His twenty-four hours were almost up. Logic said there was nothing to be gained by staying here. Clancy’s gut told him something else.

That DropShip had belonged to Duke Aaron Sandoval, Lord Governor of Prefecture IV, and one of the richest men in The Republic. Clancy had heard the scuttlebutt: he had been ejected by the Lord Governor of New Canton, and there was a falling out. It was the same political shift that had probably cost Clancy his cargo—and now the Duke was dead.

Most likely.

Clancy wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen something separate from the DropShip before it made its death plunge. A small separate plasma flare had descended into the gulf.

Clancy thought it was a ’Mech, and if so, it might have survived. Whoever was in it was likely loyal to the Duke and would want to get away from New Canton as quickly as possible. They’d head for the spaceport, where Clancy just happened to be sitting with an Excalibur–class DropShip and three empty cargo bays, ready to launch.

He had nothing. Nothing but an idea, and a hope, and the guts to try and pull things off if his idea turned out to be the truth. He stood and grabbed his neurohelmet.

“Stand by to lift on my order, but open bay one, and have LoaderMech Alpha ready when I get there.” He stepped into the lift that would take him down through the core of the ship, then hesitated. “Keep watch on the spaceport perimeter in the direction of the crash. You see anything unusual at all, you call me right away, you hear?”

He ran the lift at emergency speed, descending so fast he had to hold onto the rail to keep his feet on the floor, then flex his knees to absorb the sudden deceleration at the bottom.

The yellow LoaderMech’s diesel engine was already clattering as he climbed up the support gantry. Lieutenant McComb, the ship’s loadmaster and the ’Mech’s regular pilot, was standing by the open cockpit. Clancy jumped into the seat, donned his neurohelmet and plugged it in, gave McComb a thumbs-up, and then slipped both hands into the waldos that controlled the manipulator arms. The LoaderMech was a prototype that Clancy had picked up in a card game a couple of stops back, and he was still getting the feel for it. Its drive controls were all designed to be operated by the pilot’s feet and knees, freeing the hands for other work. It was an unusual setup, tricky to learn, but allowed for fast and precise loading. It also meant that the ’Mech was flexible enough to do many things it was never designed for.

He tapped the throttle-up toggle with one knee, heard the diesel engine roar, and guided the machine clear of its gantry using the steering pedals. He flexed the fingers on the ends of the manipulator arms through the waldos—each finger equipped with an extendible “fingernail” blade like the tine of a forklift.

He activated the com. “Bridge, this is Clancy, what do you see?”

“Cap’n”—it was Sanchez, the engineer—“there are two spaceport security ’Mechs headed toward the south perimeter, moving fast.”

“What are they headed for?”

“I don’t see—I—Damn!”

“What?”

“A ’Mech just ripped through the south security fence, three police helicopters in pursuit, lasers blazing, and I’ll swear it’s wearing half the seaweed in the gulf!”

Duke Aaron Sandoval felt as though he were in a ground car with no springs and no brakes, running down a washboard road that never ended. The ’Mech cockpit was hot as blazes, and the Black Hawk seemed to be trying to tear itself apart with every step. But he didn’t back off the throttle. He couldn’t.

He’d figured out by now he was a dead man walking—an embarrassing corpse that had crawled out of the ocean and had to be buried before anyone beyond New Canton noticed. He was certain his DropShip hadn’t gone down by accident, and his survival was an inconvenience that somebody was going to try to cover up as soon as possible.