The Forgotten Planet
Chapter 24 – If it Sounds too Good to be True...

The one nice thing about this ship was that the common room had plenty of space for us all to sit comfortably – and that included the dog. Poochy was lying on a couch next to Adan, with his head resting on my brother’s lap. Adan stroked the dog’s head absently as he watched Max bend over to pour some spirits into a glass on a low table.

“Everyone good?” Russell asked, holding up his glass of amber liquid. “This is complements of Philip Stone, our new sponsor. It’s probably the best whiskey any of us will ever get our hands on, so enjoy.”

“What exactly is Philip expecting to get out of this sponsorship deal Russell dear?” Maxine asked suspiciously.

“He wants to make contact with whatever command structure is still operating back on Earth,” Russell replied. He took a sip of his drink before adding, “He’s interested in joining forces with them going forward. For that, he’s willing to finance our little expedition.”

“Oh Yeah?” Adan asked. “Did he try and sell you a bridge too?”

“Listen, I get it. It sounds too good to be true,” Russell answered defensively. “All I ask is that you talk to him. He wants us to come and see his base of operations. While we’re there he can explain what he wants from us in exchange for his help.”

“You told a pirate about Earth?” Vee asked. I felt the sharp edge of her retractable claws on the back of my hand.

“I told him we had a map,” Russ answered. “He brought up contacting Earth leadership. I tried to act surprised, but I don’t know that he bought it.”

“What did you tell him about Betty?” I asked. I wasn’t about to bring the most valuable technology in the known galaxy gift wrapped for a pirate.

“Nothing at all,” he answered. “I just said that we had a way of getting there, not the actual means.”

I sighed. “Fine, and what kind of help is your pirate friend offering?”

“Well, a ship for starters. I’m ashamed to say this one’s...” Russ paused, searching for the right words, and we jumped in with our own thoughts.

“A death trap?” Me.

“Smelly and gross!” Veesil.

“An outdated relic.” Max.

Adan’s thoughts contained far too many curse words for my taste.

“-slightly inadequate for our current mission parameters,” Russell continued, without missing a beat. “I don’t think the plan, as currently structured, would work if we showed up in this old girl. So, a ship, as well as all the weapons and equipment we could possibly need.”

“Where do you know Philip from?” I asked.

He seemed to consider this for a moment, taking a leisurely sip of his drink. Finally, he answered, “I was approached by an employee of his a few years ago, back on Palance. The Cabal was interested in,” he swirled his drink as he gestured with his hands, “consolidating the planet-wide black-market entities.”

I caught the look of confusion on Maxine’s face out of the corner of my eye but pretended I didn’t.

“And I assume Vance didn’t know about this?” I asked.

“I may have failed to mention it to him,” he said with a smirk. “We were still in the negotiations phase if that makes you feel any better.” I shrugged. Good to know he didn’t have a problem with double-crossing those close to him.

“Well, this may be a dumb question-” Adan started to ask.

“From experience, I’d say he’s probably right,” I interjected, getting a glare from big brother for my philanthropic efforts. He’s so sensitive sometimes.

“-but who exactly are these guys?” he continued while glaring at me. “Is Cabal just a fancy name for their pirate organization?” Poochy took the opportunity to reorient himself with respect to where Vee was sitting – hand-in-hand next to me, of course – before allowing himself to relax his head again. The dog was no longer aggressive with Veesil, just wary.

“Not dumb, actually.” Russell gave me a look too. I shrugged. Sarcasm is an acquired taste I suppose. “The history of the organization is fascinating, but I’ll let Philip explain it to you when you meet him. Suffice it to say, this is the largest outfit in the occupied sectors that isn’t affiliated with the lizards.”

In my experience, if the deal sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. So far, this deal sounded far too good to be true. Unfortunately, we really didn’t have another choice. Even if our ship could defy the odds and limp across space to Lyonel, for our plan to work we couldn’t show up in a floating wreck and expect to be taken seriously. Plus, we’d require some specialized equipment to pull off Veesil’s little plan.

“We going to have any trouble leaving Richi?” I asked. I still wasn’t convinced that it was safe to just be sitting here in a powered-down ship in the docking bay, with Paul’s murder weapon holstered on Adan’s right hip.

Russell shook his head. “That’s been taken care of. Philip bribed the right people – not that there was going to be much of a clamoring for justice anyway. This is an outlaw station after all. But it’s probably time to get going anyway, unless there’s something else we need to do while we’re here?”

“About the only supplies we have are freeze-dried rations and toilet paper,” Maxine said. “Not that we could afford to buy anything else.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep working on the Heisenberg manipulator,” Adan said. “We’ll be eating steak and potatoes every night after that.”

I’d never had quantum generated food before, but anything’s better than dehydrated green pho-meat – that I still say is made from people.

“Where’s Philip’s base?” Max asked.

“It’s in system, but we’ll have to calculate its position. Philip left us with the key,” Russell explained.

“The key to what?” Adan asked. “The front door?”

“It’s a positional key,” Russell said. “The base is a dark body in deep orbit”

Adan turned to me and said, “Huh?”

“The station, I assume, doesn’t emit any heat, light or radio waves, and it’s so small against the backdrop of space, that there’s no way to replace it on sensors,” I answered. “You would need a key to know its relative position in space at any given moment.”

“Don’t you replace intelligence sexy, Max?” Vee asked.

“Uh,” Max said, as both women glanced in Adan’s direction.

Vee frowned and said, “No, obviously that’s not the case. My bad.”

“Hey!” Adan exclaimed.

“You’re pretty though,” Max said soothingly.

“That is true,” Adan agreed.

“In an oversized simian sort of way,” Vee added. “In dimly lit situations. At a distance”

Adan tried to look hurt, but eventually conceded the smile, and Vee stifled a giggle with her hand.

“Anyway,” Russell continued with a slight shake of his head, “Philip told me that his people hollowed out the interior of an asteroid and built their HQ inside of it.”

“How many people does he have exactly?” I asked. A project like that would likely have taken a few decades and tens of thousands of man-hours. That meant that the Cabal was a fairly large organization, and that it had been around for quite some time. It also meant they liked their privacy. A dark base in a system that was connected to the rest of the galaxy by a single wild wormhole was about as private as an organization could get.

“I don’t have exact numbers,” Russell answered, “but my understanding is that Cabal is a loose collective of basically all the pirate activity in the spiral arm.”

“Philip’s got that much juice now?” Maxine asked. “When you introduced me too him, I thought he was full of it.”

“Yeah, me too,” Russell said. “We missed out on that opportunity, but I think things will be different this time.” He touched his wrister and Maxine’s lit up. “Take us in pilot.

...

At full A-Drive, it only took half an hour to fly to the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt. We spent more time than that getting clearance to leave Richi and taxiing out of the docking area.

“Big ugly rock, twelve-o’clock,” Maxine called out.

It certainly was big. This was one of those extinction-level objects that planet-bound populations typically don’t want in orbit anywhere near where they live and keep their stuff. The exterior of the asteroid was a lumpy, grey, oblong rock a few hundred kilometers in diameter. A sensor sweep from the ship’s antiquated antennae confirmed numerous weapon nodes and clumps of scanning equipment hidden among the crags and rocky outcroppings, and a number of small satellites – probably drones packed with heat-seeking nuclear warheads or heavy-gas lasers – swung around it in tight orbit.

“Should we hail them,” Adan started, “or, oh, I guess we’re expected.”

More likely key must have been a reverse homing beacon, that sent an automated request for access. Regardless, the midsection of the asteroid parted, and a massive set of doors began to extend outward and slide open. A shaft of light the height of a two or three capital ships parked nose to tail grew horizontally into an enormous rectangular opening that dwarfed our tiny ship. It made me imagine a blue whale opening its mouth to swallow a single krill.

“So,” Maxine started, “we’re totally sure about this?”

“We’ll be fine Max,” Russell said. “Match the rock’s rotation and take us in.”

The ship lurched into action, due to the inertial dampeners kicking in a few milliseconds late, and we entered into a well-lit rectangular chamber with a matching set of doors to the one we just passed through. After the doors in front of us sealed shut, the inner doors began to part. I tried not to think about the weapons that were likely pointed at us while we waited.

As the inner doors opened, the first thing that I noticed was a small sun hanging in the middle of the chamber, bathing the interior in bluish-white light.

“Holy nightlights Batman,” Adan said.

“No way,” Vee said. She was back in the biker outfit she’s worn when she first stole the golden record. “You know Batman?”

“Lover,” Max said, “you really need to lose that saying.”

“Really?” Adan asked, looking crestfallen.

Vee stuck out her tongue at the back of Max’s head. She looked at my brother and added, “Batman totally rocks.”

Max turned in her seat and said, “You really want me to fly towards that thing, Russ?”

I asked Vee, “You like Batman?”

Her eyebrows shot up and she nodded. “He’s the world’s greatest detective, Tiger.”

Russell cleared his throat and asked, “What exactly am I looking at here Galen?”

I looked back at the bright object and said, “A ball of superheated plasma by the look of it. They’re using the central fusion reaction as both a source of light and heat.”

“Those pillars must be supplying the magnetic field,” Vee replied.

The door was still sliding open, but it was plenty wide for our little ship to pass through.

“Take us in a little closer,” I said.

Maxine looked to Russell for confirmation, and he gave a little nod. With a loud sigh, Maxine turned back around and fired up the forward thrusters.

Once we cleared the doors and I had a better view of the interior of the station, I knew Vee was right about the pillars. The roof and floor of the station melted into a stalactite and matching stalagmite of polymerized metal that met at the centrally-oriented ball of plasma in the middle of the hollow station.

I looked at Vee and said, “Have you seen anything like this before?”

“I’ve read about it in the Depository,” she replied. “The station’s of Terran design, from the late colonial days. I didn’t think any were actually built though.”

The interior walls of the lateral surface were lined with one continuous three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cityscape, and a massive shipyard branched off the ceiling in tiered layers of starships around the artificial star.

“We have a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, with trace amounts of CO2 and methane,” I said, parroting the readings from the sensors.

“We’re getting coordinates,” Adan said. “Looks like they want us to go to the far side of the shipyards.”

“Got it,” Max replied.

Our ship rattled slightly as we accelerated towards the amassed fleet of ships. On the way in we passed countless fighter craft, mid and full-sized freighters, various destroyer-class frigates and even a couple of ancient Terran capital ships – one of which was built almost entirely around what was likely the largest mass driver ever assembled. No two ships seemed to be from the same era, and just about every species in the galaxy seemed to be accounted for amongst the mismatched fleet.

“Russell darling,” Max cooed, “are you certain this is the same Philip I met in Oasis? Because I don’t remember that Philip owning a space station from the future and an armada large enough to conquer a planet.”

“Yeah, he told me what he was planning,” Russell said. “At the time I just took him for a loud-mouthed braggart.” He took his cap off so he could run his hand through his hair. “That’s our spot next to that saucer-shaped craft.”

Maxine set down next to the Reticulan scout ship with a red hawk emblazoned on the hull, and when she powered down the ship, we heard a compressed boom from the aft of the ship, followed by a whining noise and then complete loss of power.

After a few silent moments in the dark, I heard Adan mumble, “Worst investment ever.” I didn’t bother to disagree.