Chapter Ten - Harper PI pt2

Chapter 10 - Harper PI Part 2

Harper P.I. part 2

Location: Sinti IV Spaceport - warehouse district

It was a long walk to the warehouse. The spaceport at Sinti IV was laid out in typical Perseid fashion. The landing pads along with cargo-filled warehouses at the upper right on the map, or Alpha quadrant, entertainment and dining and shopping centers at the upper left, or the Delta quadrant , housing and accommodations at the lower left, or Charlie quadrant, and the administrative and government district at the lower right, or Bravo. The numbering system was based on a four digit coordinate system. The first two numbers being the north/south, east/west coordinates for the structure, the third being the building number with the last coordinate being an alphanumeric combination designating the room and floor. The main north – south and east – west through fares were given the coordinate value of zero. Thus, a restaurant in the Delta district might be located at coordinates Delta, six, four, twelve 2G. A hungry spaceman would walk six blocks to the north of the spaceport center, then four blocks west until reaching building twelve room 2G which was located on the second floor of the building. which, being an even-numbered building, would be on the north side of the street. On Sinti IV, the building in question was a restaurant named "Splendiferous Exotic Vegetation," which catered to the Than race, offering exotic and sometimes intoxicating plants for the insectoids to nibble upon. To reach warehouse Alpha 11 7 38 1A, the three Andromeda crew members had walked eleven blocks to the north then seven blocks to the east from the center of the spaceport, then located the thirty eighth warehouse on the north side of the street.

On arrival at Warehouse 38, Dylan and Beka lined up behind Harper as he jacked in to the access portal at the entry gate. With practiced ease, he convinced the spaceport computer that he was the supervisor of a group of spaceport longshoremen who had arrived to load a set of cargo containers aboard the Chichin cargo shuttle BemissNik. As the entry gate opened for them, the lights came on inside section C of warehouse 38, where the Chichin cargo was stored. The letter designation indicated that Warehouse 38 was divided into A-B-C-D sections. Harper's computer access had shown that Sections B, C, and D were legitimate cargo storage locations, but Section A was electronically listed as being empty. The Andromeda crew, shamelessly acting for any cameras or outside observers, walked in a bored fashion up to entry door C and entered the warehouse. Once inside, they abandoned their acting and sprang into action. Harper ran past the neatly stacked rows of boxes and crates to the north wall of the warehouse, finding the connecting door that led into section A. Jacking into the access port to the left of the door, he again fooled the spaceport computer into thinking that he was a maintenance technician exercising the building's fire doors. Dylan stood dead center before the door, while Beka stood on the right. Harper looked at them, noting that their weapons were drawn and they were ready for action. With a blink of his eyes, the door opened and the lights came on inside the supposedly empty section A. Dylan stepped through, moving straight ahead, as Beka stepped through moving to the left. This gave Harper enough time to unjack and step through, moving to the right. The door slid shut behind Harper and locked with a decisive metallic sound.

Warehouse 38 Section A was filled with boxes, crates, containers, objects, and items of various sizes, shapes, and colors. In contrast with section C, the items in this room were scattered haphazardly, in heaps and piles. Along the north end of the warehouse were several office enclosures where clerks and supervisors could oversee the process of moving and inventorying cargo. No sooner had the door closed behind Harper than the door to the corner office opened and a man's voice was heard.

"I thought I heard a noise out here. Hey, why are the lights on?"

The speaker was a tall man of massive girth. Once, perhaps, he had been of athletic build, but time and the excesses of rich food and strong drink had worked their evil magic upon him. Now he was just an average balding fat guy in a bad suit. As the door opened fully and he saw the Andromeda crew on the other side of the warehouse, he drew his gauss pistol with surprising speed and fired.

"Wait! We just want to talk to you!" shouted Dylan, diving for cover behind a wooden cabinet.

"It's too late for that!" shouted the man, firing at Dylan. "Guys, get out here and give me some help!"

Out through the office door ran Fat Guy's associates. The first was a short man with an improbable shock of red hair, carrying the shiniest gauss rifle any of them had ever seen. The second was a tall, thin man with a pock marked face and wide, staring eyeballs who carried a matched set of pearl-handled gauss pistols. The third was a Nightsider who was inexpertly wielding an old and beat-up gauss rifle,.

"Uh oh," said Harper to Dylan. "I don't like the look of this."

The Nightsider raised his rifle and fired at Beka, who had ducked behind an ornately carved cabinet made from the famous orange and silver wood of the planet Delva. The round struck the cabinet, blowing a large ragged hole in the top and spraying shards of the inlaid crystal mirror and pieces of the finely-crafted mosaic tile everywhere. Fat Guy smacked the Nightsider on the back of the head.

"You idiot!" he shouted. "That's our profits you're shooting up! Kill the people, not the loot!"

The Nightsider ducked his head subserviently, lowering his rifle and stepping back. Fat Guy fired again at Dylan, then dispersed his associates with a complex series of hand signals. Eyeballs, grinning evilly, loosened his pistols in their holsters and ducked out of sight behind a pile of green farm equipment. The Nightsider ran behind a stack of military rations bearing the brown coloration of the Kalderan Commune. Fat Guy took a few steps forward and was lost from sight behind a collection of golden Umbrite statues. Shorty ran past the offices and began climbing the stairs to the overhead catwalk.

Dylan looked at Beka and Harper. "Let's spread out," he said. "Watch the crossfire. Try to take one of them alive."

Keeping low, they moved out from behind the exquisite Delvan cabinetry. Beka stopped in the center of a group of blue-tinged, heavy wooden conference tables, and flipping one of them on end for cover crouched down and began to look for targets. Harper moved behind a stack of rolled up rugs of of Makrai design. Dylan continued to run until he was concealed behind a group of curved computer control consoles, which were painted a shocking color of pink.

Nothing like being inconspicuous, thought Dylan. He pulled out both force lances, activated them, and looked out from behind one of the consoles. Spotting the Nightsider he paused for a second to consider his options then took careful aim and fired. His shot struck a blue Kalderan high-security storage locker and ricocheted off it slamming into the Nightsider, knocking him unconscious. When Dylan fired, Shorty spotted him and fired from the catwalk, splattering a gauss round off the surface of a computer console and peppering Dylan with needle-sharp shards of plasticene. Luckily, his High Guard jacket absorbed most of it, but he ended up with a few shards embedded in his head. It's lucky I turned my head away, he thought. Otherwise I might have been blinded.

Beka was in trouble. The conference tables didn't provide a great amount of flank concealment, so she was taking fire from both Fat Guy and Eyeballs. Harper tried to provide covering fire, but his view of Fat Guy was obscured, and Eyeballs was too experienced to reveal himself so he could hit him. Also, Shorty was blasting away at her from the catwalk. His gauss rifle was set on full automatic, and he had a seemingly inexhaustible ammunition supply. Life was becoming miserable and starting to look shorter and shorter.

Dylan maneuvered behind his cover, peering between and under the consoles to find an open shot while not revealing himself to Shorty on the catwalk. Moving between two consoles, he looked out through the gap between them and saw Eyeballs taking aim for another shot at Harper. Dylan raised his force lance and fired. The shot took Eyeballs squarely in the center of his chest and he hit the floor jerked once and was still.

Harper heard the force lance fire and stepped forward to see what had happened. From his vantage point on the catwalk Shorty took advantage of Harper's exposure to unleash a fusillade of gauss rounds at the engineer. Harper jumped backwards to the cover of the rugs but one of Shorty's rounds turned to to be the proverbial golden BB, the gauss rifle effector round passing through the firing chamber of Harper's gauss pistol. The gun was jerked from his hands, with such force as to numb his hand. He reached for the force lance he carried as a back up weapon but was unable to grasp the weapon. He was, at least for the moment, effectively disarmed.

Fat Guy had seen his two associates hit the floor and realized that the odds were now two to three instead of the superior four to three, as it had been in the beginning. He redoubled his efforts, firing at Beka while moving around behind the statues. Beka fired back, but her shots were deflected from the curved surfaces of the statues and sent off in directions other than she had intended. This is nuts, thought Beka. I've got to take this guy out. She steadied her weapon against one of the tables and aimed at the part of Fat Guy that spread out beyond one of the statues. Aligning the sights carefully, she began to squeeze the trigger slowly. From the catwalk above her Shorty changed his tactics. He laid a down burst of fire not at Beka but at the conference table she was hiding behind aiming at where he estimated her head would be. The conference table was solid enough to prevent the rounds from passing through but the impact of the high velocity effectors caused splinters of wood to fly off the back side of the table. The splinters were moving at a reasonable fraction of the speed of the effector rounds and several of them struck Beka in the face. She went down, screaming in pain.

Hearing Beka's cries, Harper dashed from behind cover and ran to her, kneeling beside her he began assessing her injuries. Fat Guy saw this and smiled in triumph. Two out of the three intruders were now under his control. He stepped out from behind the statues and pointed his gauss pistol at Beka and Harper.

"Come out!" he shouted. "I've got your two friends covered. You've got five seconds before I kill them."

Dylan returned one force lance to its holster and held the second one above his head as he stood up. "I surrender!" he shouted. "Don't hurt them!" He walked forward until he could see Fat Guy, then stopped, still holding both hands above his head.

"Drop it," said Fat Guy, pointing his gun at Dylan.

Dylan dropped the force lance on the floor and kicked it away.

Fat Guy leered at the prostrate Beka. "Well," he said, "It looks like only two of your friends have to die tonight. I'm keeping you for myself."

"Fat chance, you fat bastard," snarled Beka her face a mask of pain and defiance. "You can rape me at gunpoint, but you'd better not go to sleep after that."

Unseen to anyone, one of the other office doors opened silently.

"NO ONE THREATENS ME!" shouted Fat Guy. He aimed his pistol at Harper, grinning. "Say goodbye to your little friend."

Harper glanced up at Fat Guy. He had one chance to save Beka. He was going to throw himself at Fat Guy. He was close enough to the thug that he would be able to grapple with Fat Guy as he pulled the trigger. It was a suicidally foolish move, but it would give Dylan time to draw his remaining forcelance and finish the job.

To Beka, the ensuing events seemed to occur in slow motion. Harper tensed beginning his leap. Fat Guy's head turned from her to look at Harper. His gauss pistol came up centering on Harper. Something flew out from the front of his chest and bounced off one of the conference tables. His gun hand dropped to his side, and a puzzled look came across his face. He brought his free hand up and swiped it across the front of his chest. When his hand came away bloody, a look of astonishment came over his face. He looked down at Beka as though asking for an explanation, then his eyes rolled upward and he collapsed to the floor.

One second later, there was a volley of three gauss rifle shots, and Shorty was slammed to the rear of the catwalk with blossoms of red erupting from his chest. He bounced off the rear wall and rebounded forward, tumbling over the handrail with flailing arms, and hitting the floor below, instantly dead. His fancy gauss rifle broke into at least four pieces.

As Dylan walked up to Beka and Harper, a man stepped out from behind the farm equipment. The man was dark complected and well muscled. His hair was cut into dreadlocks that reached to the middle of his back, while in contrast to Dylan's clean shaven appearance he had a beard and a mustache. He was carrying the largest gauss rifle that Dylan had ever seen. It was actually a Lancer squad support weapon that had had its bipod removed and a shoulder stock attached; in the newcomer's arms it looked almost like a child's toy. The man looked down at Beka, totally unconcerned.

"You should get the woman some medical attention," he said. From the tone of his voice he could have been discussing last week's weather.

"We will," said Dylan. "Thanks very much for your help. My name is Dylan Hunt."

"Nice to meet you, Dylan Hunt," said the big Nietzschean. "My name is Tyr Anasazi. I'll take it from here."

Chapter 9

Chapter11