The Black Map

By Aaron Brownell

On the outer edge of the galaxy, some salvage jobs are easy and some you don't come back from. Working for the mob can be like that. For Booker Ward and the crew of the salvage ship Kristi, this new job they've just been handed will end up being more than they bargained for.
The crew's employer found what it thinks is a Centurion class battleship from the fall of the Realm. Nothing like the ship has been seen in the galaxy for centuries. Images of it from the deep space scan show some vague and grainy views. The one thing they can clearly see is the name, and its Old Realm. The scant information in the images makes Booker want to pass. It doesn't matter because the mob wants the warship and its Booker's job to go get it.
Everything about the job feels bad. The ship lays abandon on a planet at the galactic edge. Out on the edge of the black. The space between galaxies. The images don't even show if it is in one piece, more else able to be returned to space.
Bad jobs come with problems, and this one's no different. The first problem with the job is that their prize is huge. Their salvage ship can't refloat anything of the battleship's size without using the battleship's own internal power. But re-firing the engines, if they can be re-fired, means waking up the ship's Artificial Intelligence. Next problem; if the ship doesn't want to go with them then they'll also have to deal with a hostile warship. Bringing it back to life after so many centuries could end up being their undoing.
Their problems don't stop with a moody ship. If it really is a lost battleship from the Realm, every local government, militia and pirate gang in the galaxy is going to want a piece of it, not to mention the mob's real opposition. The salvage crew needs to get out there, find it, and do whatever they're going to do before the Command Authority, which controls the core of the galaxy, gets wind of the operation and sends its fleet to take over. Time is definitely not on Booker's side with this job.
And, if the crew can't get the ship back into space, then what? Booker knows he'll need a good plan B with a job like this one. The mob and everybody else in the galaxy are going to want the ship. Is there even an alternate option with such a job? Having an ace in their pocket may end up being the difference between life and death for the salvage crew.
Can they get the ship flying? Will they make it out in time or will the Command Authority show up and blow them into dust? The crew of the Kristi will be deep into danger before this job is over. Buy THE BLACK MAP today and be thrown into the heart pounding intrigue of a deep space salvage unlike any other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350926569

Book preview

Chapter One

Are you sure about this?

Why?

I don’t know. It just feels like a bad idea.

You always say that.

I do not.

Yes, you do.

Well, that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.

Seriously? You’re like an old lady. All you do is worry. If the Old Realm had a god of worry, he’d look like you.

A broad smile broke out across Colin Chinn’s face as he steadied his hand-torch on the control panel adjacent to the door before them.

The sexy god of worry.

Yebat’ Menya, Captain Booker Ward mumbled toward the floor as he punched in the last two digits of a ten-digit code. An audible click came from inside the control panel he was working on, followed by the sounds of long-silent machinery coming to life.

Both men collected themselves and moved aside to create a clear path for the man standing behind them. The team’s heavy weapons specialist, JP, was currently taking up the remainder of the small service entrance. Well, he was taking up half and his backpack loaded with a plasma cannon was consuming the other half. At six-foot-four-inches tall and a chiseled 240 pounds, JP was the only one on the team capable of wielding the weapon without suffering a back injury.

All three men braced as the rotors inside the servo motors for the blast doors whirled into action. The heavy metal door slid out of place in a smooth manner, exposing a second set of blast doors.

Double blast doors?

I told you this wasn’t a good idea.

Booker scratched his chin for a second, the same way that he did when he was at a poker table gambling. It was known as a bad sign. The captain of the salvage team flipped onto his back and kicked the closed set of doors as hard as he was able. The second set of servo motors whirled to life and the loosened doors started sliding out of the way.

The big gunner tensed his muscles and stared down the darkened opening. The internal sleeve of the plasma cannon’s barrel glowed a bright sun-yellow, waiting to be unleashed upon whatever came at them.

Captain Booker Ward flipped back over onto his knees and reached out into the blackness. Groping around on the wall for several seconds, Booker’s hand landed on a large twist switch. He secured a solid grip and twisted. As the contacts came together for the first time in centuries, lights snapped on overhead. First one light, then there were three, and then five. In only seconds the interior of the weapons bunker was well lit, alleviating the trio’s anxiety that they might be walking into a booby trap.

Colin Chinn, or CC, a solidly built man of modest character and less than excessive optimism, looked through the open doors and smiled.

Well, nobody’s been in here since the Old Realm’s Black Guard stocked it.

It looks forgotten all right.

What kind of shape you think it’s in?

JP moved his trigger finger to its usual resting place on the side of the receiver, then made a face at the other two men.

Hmm, I’d say it’s probably in good shape. The way this place looks, I would guess it’s all been in storage at least a hundred and fifty years. The weapons should be fine. The shape of the ammunition, on the other hand, will depend on how well this bunker was built. If the humidity control is still intact, we should be able to salvage a sizeable percentage of it.

It’s payday! CC said happily.

There’s work before pay, CC. Go get Abigail in place so we can start unloading this hoard.

On my way.

The second-in-command hopped to his feet and wedged past the large gunman standing behind him. The other two men moved slowly into the bunker. Except for a heavy blanket of dust covering every surface, it looked exactly as it should. It was obvious that the bunker hadn’t been opened since the last of the Old Realm troops had either left or died. Considering the amount of material and the obvious state of quiet, it was probably one of the many weapons bunkers which had been lost or forgotten with the fall of the Realm. Whoever had garrisoned the outpost had either died off or gone native. Whatever had happened, this place wasn’t part of the battle lines. Everything here was still sitting and waiting.

Booker wiped his hand across the top of a nearby crate. The text on it was definitely Old Realm - Terran, unless he missed his guess. It was a case of semi-automatic rifles. He inspected the pressure release valve on the hard-side case. The plunger was still indented, showing the case’s seal was still intact. Booker smiled at JP.

They just don’t make stuff like they used to.

JP smiled and began to disrobe from the plasma cannon assembly and its backpack. Booker Ward wiped the dust on the leg of his pants and stretched. At five-foot-eleven inches tall and a slim 190 pounds, he possessed a fighter’s body. A mop of red hair set atop sunbaked features, his deep penetrating grey eyes were shadowy and stated that he was a calculating person. He was every inch the picture of a modern-day treasure hunter.

The scars all over his body also said he was a risk taker. A natural leader of men, Booker had become a ship’s captain the old-fashioned way. Just out of the military and looking for adventure, he had signed onto a salvage team. The team was off to find some ship that had crashed on one of the sketchy outer planets of the ring. As such trips tend to go, it had all gone badly. Booker and the ship’s cook were the only two who made it back alive. The cook died a couple months after returning. Now, Booker had himself a ship, and as such, was now a captain. A captain of his own destiny. That had been many years past, and before he had amassed any of his current crew.

Booker looked over and noticed that JP had finally extracted himself from the cannon’s exoskeleton. Booker had found JP on a bar floor in a spaceport near the Central Hub. JP had been infantry. He had made several drops onto rocks that no one wanted or needed. After his service time with the western militia of the Central Hub was done, he had gone home to his farming planet. But farming was boring, so the big infantryman entertained himself by bar fighting. Booker had watched as the half-drunken mountain of infantryman instilled a masterful beating upon some poor militia captain who had disrespected him in some fashion. It had taken nine of the militia captain’s men to level up the playing field. Booker had hung around until JP regained consciousness, then bought him a beer and promptly offered him a job. That was five years back.

Booker and JP moved off in different directions around the room’s exterior. Each of them paying close attention to his individual surroundings. They were looking for anything, even the minutest of clues showing that things might be out of place. They wanted to make sure that someone hadn’t left a bunch of empty crates, or more importantly, that the Black Guard hadn’t booby-trapped the place before they departed. The two inspected each area thoroughly and then moved on systematically. They were just meeting up on the far side of the bunker’s main room when the sounds of Abigail’s landing thrusters came rumbling through the open blast doors. Everything here looked legit. The bunker’s main room was unbothered, and all of its containers appeared to be intact.

The main storage area possessed three doors that went off into separate storage areas. Booker looked at them and assumed from the contents of the main storage area that these were probably filled with communications equipment, or some type of general supplies. But truthfully, it was hard to say. The Old Realm had no standard design for storage bunkers on outpost worlds. They just kind of utilized what was provided to them.

To Booker, it didn’t really matter what was in them or what they looked like. The supplies in the main storage area were more than enough for their needs. And they were definitely going to take everything here. The main cargo deck on The Kristi could hold many times what was in the room. It would just take multiple trips by Abigail to get it all up there. Though they had the room, taking stuff from the outlying rooms would just be an exaggeration of riches.

CC came rolling through the opened blast doors on an automated crate mover and skittered to a stop. Booker gave him the thumbs up sign and pointed to the stack directly in front of him. CC deftly slid the forks of the mover into the slots on the crate-holding pallet and lifted a large stack of green plastic shipping containers into the air. Turning the whole affair one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on the big rubber tires of the mover, he proceeded back through the blast doors and down the tunnel.

CC went in and out with the mover like an automaton until the cargo area of Abigail was chockablock full of weapons and ammunition crates. Deciding it was enough, he left the mover parked under a stack of crates and hit the kill switch. Turning to face the tunnel, he flipped JP a mock salute, turned on his heels, and scampered up the ramp of their dropship. JP smiled and returned the gesture as CC, the official pilot of the team, lifted off on his way back up to orbit. Booker came wandering down the tunnel and tossed the big gunman a brown foil packet as dust from the liftoff flew around the tunnel entrance.

Looky what I found!

Combat rations?

Yeah! There’re a couple pallets of them in there. The seals look okay, too.

A couple-century-old rations? I’ll pass. The new ones are bad enough.

That’s why I offered it to you. I’m as sure as the goddess not going to eat it.

Booker smiled and JP tossed the packet into the grass next to the tunnel entrance. The two sat down to wait on Abigail’s return. The spot by the tunnel entrance offered a nice view of the surrounding area, and they would be able to see people or ships coming from a long way off. With the bunker having been built into the side of a mountain, natural terrain obstacles on the small planet of Nouvo Bari blocked any approach from the rear. One could come overtop with a ship, but not without giving away their presence in advance. All-in-all, it was a fine spot for an outpost.

The great Terran military machine of the Old Realm, or the Realm, depending upon where your allegiances lie, was the greatest war machine ever known to the galaxy. They had spread their rule far across the expanse of space. Some say that at their peak, they even went out into black space. But there were as many folktales as true facts left anymore. Nobody but crazy people and outlaws attempted to travel the black space between galaxies. Nobody ventured into the void of their own accord. That aside, they were a massive war machine, that was true enough.

Like the stories of any great civilization were told to young ones in schooling, when the Realm finally fell politically, the military held it together for a time. And, as like any great civilization, the military also finally fell with it. Most all of the great Terran fleet disappeared in the final days of the Realm. The ones that survived were collected up by the militia of the Central Hub. The Central Hub was all that was left of the ashes that was the Old Realm. It is composed of the all the planets of the Terran system, and all of the little civilized rocks out as far as the Ort Cloud. The leadership cast running the area now was called the Command Authority. They tended to lead with a heavy hand.

The remainder of the spiral arm splintered into small collectives of systems or multi-planet groups when the Old Realm faded. They do whatever is best for their own concerns most days. The area at the galaxy center went black again, consumed by the black hole that powers the galaxy. The area around the black hole’s spinning gas cloud returned itself to wasteland. Nobody bothers with anything in there anymore.

Everything outside of the galactic edge is black space. The blackness extends from the edge of this galaxy all the way out to the edge of the next galaxy. Some say that the genius minds of the Old Realm conceived of navigation that allowed ships to successfully traverse the black. Some say that they traveled all the way to Andromeda. It’s probably all fancy stories for taverns and schoolyards. No ship capable of any such feat had ever been found floating around – nor was there any written captain’s account of a crew attempting such an act of lunacy.

No, the Old Realm had lived and died the way all such realms do. Now, there was what was left over. Booker had read historical tales of the Terran civilization from millennia past that had conquered all that there was to rule. And they, at their end, had fell. The people that came after them looked at what was left behind with a mix of awe and nostalgia for what was still intact. Great cities of old that people of today could not build. Levels of technology that could not be replicated, and spaceships of such complexity that they must have been made by some advanced civilization. Sadly, they weren’t. It was all just a civilization lost. It was just the universe at work, and the passage of time.

Booker was pulled from his thoughts by Abigail’s thruster flare in the atmosphere as CC put the brakes on the old girl. It was time to go back to work. JP stood and stretched out his massive frame before turning to head back down the tunnel. Booker stood to follow. At the rate CC was driving and flying, they would be done cleaning out the main storage room in a good four or five trips. He would need to get their communications/tech mastermind Nelson to come down and set a couple of security reminders on the three interior doors. They could come back, in-between real jobs, and clean out the rest of it.

Today, the job was to fill up with the main storage room goods and head off to find their contact and get paid. Yes, it was definitely time to get paid.

Chapter Two

Colin Chinn pulled the Kristi into a geosynchronous orbit around M4b and let the big antimatter drive start to cool down. The K25523B antimatter drive had been pulled from an Old Realm frigate and stuffed into the salvage ship while it was at the old naval shipyard. The antimatter drive was twice as big of a power plant as the Osprey Class salvage ship had actually been designed for, and it made getting around the engine room a hassle. The Kristi had no problems handling the extra energy output, as the Osprey Class ship came equipped with a secondary exoskeleton. The exoskeleton was a design feature used to keep the salvage ship intact when it was inevitably over utilized by the military boys and girls. The naval yard crew stiffened it somewhat to handle all the extra torque that the new oversized drive put out.

The crew that fitted out the Kristi also saw fit to procure one of the frigate’s pulse cannons, and two tubes for plasma torpedo launchers. The tubes, mounted to the front of the salvage ship, were usually empty. Old Realm torpedoes were always in short supply. The pulse cannon was a different monster. Mounted on top of the exoskeleton, the cannon was fed directly by the antimatter drive. The cannon’s gimbal gave it a 180-degree rotation vertically, and a 360-degree rotation horizontally. With a 150-millimeter smooth bore, the cannon was capable of punching a hole through everything except Old Realm armor. That was okay, though, as all the Old Realm conflict ships that were left moving about the galaxy were not to be trifled with. Most all of them were in the possession of regional militias or the military of the Central Hub. There were a handful of ships, such as the Kristi, which were privately registered for commercial use. But none of them were the heavy conflict ships.

Originally christened the KXR-42, the Osprey Class salvage ship cruised the galaxy for some ten years before being moored down in the old naval yard and forgotten about. She had been later found, bought, and retrofitted just previous to Booker Ward signing on for his first salvage run. Renamed the Kristi, she was a salvage ship of the first order. A full three decks tall, with the bottom deck for salvage materials, the second for mechanical and storage, and a top deck for berthing. Observation areas on all three decks gave complete visual coverage of the ship’s exterior. With a command floor at the front of the third deck for daily operations and space flight, the Kristi also had a secondary flight floor to the rear of the ship for maneuvering during salvage operations. Where the whole vessel could be commanded from the main floor on deck three, only the primary lifting/pulling engines, and dual ion helium3/lithium infused plasma drives, were able to be controlled from the maneuvering deck.

From her oversized thruster cones in the rear, to her full exoskeleton, to her sexy nurse nose art, the Kristi was one hell of a vessel. A vessel currently full of arms and ammunition for sale.

KXR-42, Kristi, hailing M4b spaceport central on operating channel twelve, over.

Colin Chinn kicked his feet up on the edge of the comms console and waited for the return.

KXR-42, Kristi, this is landing and approach tower two, we have you fixed in geosync and cleared for landing on pad six.

Roger that, tower two. Pad six.

Chinn, you old space pirate! How’s the salvage business these days?

It’s always good when you get to come back. Know what I mean, Manny?

Roger that. I completely agree. Once you land, and get the ship squared away, you can find your contact waiting for you at the central reception hospitality room.

Thanks, Manny. We appreciate the info. I’ll send you over a case of Grizzlys for your efforts.

And you are cleared to land. Have a good stay, for as long as you can.

Roger that, the Kristi is falling out of orbit.

CC cleared the comms and walked over to the second chair, which was set in front of the Kristi’s flight controls. With deft hands CC let the Kristi rotate over some ten-degrees and begin her controlled fall into the outer atmosphere. The ionization visible in all viewing ports brought Booker Ward to the command floor.

We’re headed in already?

Yup. You owe Manny a case of booze for getting us a good spot. We’re headed down to pad six. Oh, and our friend Lorenzo will be waiting for us at the bar.

"So, send some Grizzlys to Manny, and make sure to pack a gun for the bar?’

Sounds about right.

Why don’t you and JP come along for the meet, just in case? Aziz and Nelson can unload the cargo easily enough.

Okay, no worries. Let me get the old girl down on the pad, and we’ll see what happens next.

Okay. I’ll go tell the crew what’s going on.

Booker made it to the blast door that separated the flight deck from the access way leading to the other decks, as CC flared the ion plasma drives to slow the big vessel’s entry.

M4b, the fourth moon, and one of a binary pair circling the planet Mellonetary, was a good-sized planetoid, as moons went. It was possessed of an iron-metal core that consumed approximately 75 percent of the moon’s volume. As such, M4b’s gravitational pull was twice what one would expect of a moon of similar mass. The extra gravity was a prime reason that the Terran fathers chose it for terraforming and colonization. With a gravity of 1.2-Terran, it was a prime location for an outpost.

As all outposts often start out, the quaint little spot started as a landing area. The landing area quickly turned into a spaceport. The spaceport developed into a city. And then – the fall of the Realm. Nowadays, M4b was a spaceport again. Holding some thirty or forty thousand souls, it was the best situated heavy landing area in the outer edge of the spiral arm. It was also home to an office of The Company, and to The Company’s voice of authority, Lorenzo Sanht. If such a thing as organized crime still existed in the galaxy, then The Company was what it looked like. And as such, Lorenzo Sanht was the godfather of crime in the outer spiral arm.

Where The Company was definitely seedy and criminal, it was also businesslike. It paid fair and double-crossed only when it was absolutely necessary. They also had an interesting love-hate relationship with the Command Authority. They didn’t like or play well with each other, but they seemed perfectly content to leave each other alone if there wasn’t any conflict involved. It kind of kept one out of the other’s business. So, that love-hate kept the Central Hub out of the day-to-day workings of the spiral arm. Still, they were not to be overly trusted. That went double for Lorenzo. You didn’t turn your back on Lorenzo Sanht, unless you wanted a slug in it.

But it was still a business. And a salvage team did business with whoever wanted to pay. So, the crew of the Kristi spent a fair amount of time interacting with The Company. They just did their best to keep it all business and not let it turn into something else.

Both the front and rear loading ramps of the Kristi dropped in unison as the big antimatter drive was finally cooled enough to shut down. Two men from the spaceport crew came over with power cables and coupled them to the ship’s front power ports. With green power lights now shining all across the flight console, CC began powering down the ion-plasma drives as well. Soon enough, the sound of Aziz and Nelson could be heard echoing up the accessway into the flight deck. The unloading had officially begun.

JP came trotting down the front ramp and over to where Booker was talking with one of the spaceport’s ground crew. Semi-automatic pistols stuffed under each arm and a small pulse rifle strapped across his back, JP was ready. He had cut the stock down on the pulse rifle and fashioned it with pistol grip, making it a very functional weapon for bar fighting. It could blow a hole in a man wearing body armor, or puncture a blast door, whichever.

Booker inspected his weapons man and patted the large caliber pistol in the holster on his own side. Booker finished his conversation with the ground man and turned to yell at the ship. CC coming down the ramp made him pause. His second-in-charge had three semi-automatic rifles slung over his one shoulder, and a full belt of grenades over the other. His two companions just stared at him as he approached.

You’re packing heavy today, I see.

JP tried not to laugh as he spoke.

Well, we’re selling weapons. We probably should show up with some weapons. Don’t you think?

Seems a valid point, Booker said nodding his head.

Okay then, let’s go have some Grizzlys and try not to get killed.

The three men turned and filed out the door separating landing pad six from the spaceport’s central corridor. More a kind of roadway than it was a corridor, the central corridor ran straight from the entry point to the main business and reception area,