Free In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) by Stephen Renneberg

going!”
    “Right away, Captain.”
    Once we had enough power for thrusters, we started
climbing. Below us, the Rashidun trading post looked like a tiny village surrounded
by a patchwork quilt. Incredibly, for all its notoriety, the floating black
market had come to a successful conclusion with no arrests made.
    “So, no payback?” Jase asked.
    “Not yet, but I haven’t given up.”
    He nodded approvingly. “I wouldn’t want to be
them.”
    “They were Ories,” I said. “O-Force turned merc.”
    Jase looked impressed. “Wow, you’re lucky to be
alive!”
    “Domar Trask is their leader. Ever heard of him?”
    “No, I never had much to do with O-Force. Saw them
exercise a few times. Crazy bastards,” he said with a touch of admiration. “Maybe
you should let this one go.”
    “Good advice. If I was smarter, I’d take it.”
    “I always wondered how I’d go against those
O-Force types,” Jase said thoughtfully. “Guess I’m going to find out.”
    “Captain,” Izin’s voice sounded over the intercom,
“are you tracking any other ships close by?”
    Jase checked his sensors and shook his head. “We’re
all alone.”
    “I’m detecting a powerful magnetic field a
thousand meters to starboard,” Izin said, “and a friction avoidance shockwave
from the same area.”
    Izin routinely monitored ambient influences we
didn’t, especially anything that could interfere with energy and propulsion
systems. If he was picking up a pressure wave, something had to be generating
it, something our navigational sensors couldn’t see.
    Jase double checked his command console while I angled
our optics to starboard, filling our screen with nothing but clear blue sky.
    “Zero neutrino emissions,” Jase said, confirming
if there was a ship out there, it wasn’t running on reactive energy. That meant
they’d progressed beyond nuclear physics as a power source, putting them way up
there with the Tau Cetins!
    “It began following us as soon as we launched,”
Izin said.
    “Maybe they’re just curious,” Jase suggested,
knowing advanced civilizations sometimes buzzed human ships without contacting
them just to have a look at tech they’d abandoned long ago, but those were
always chance encounters at deep space nav points. This was different. We were
inside a planetary atmosphere far from any choke point. Whoever they were,
they’d come looking for us.
    “Izin, give me a marker,” I said.
    A contact icon appeared on the flight deck’s wraparound
screen, indicating the anomaly’s position as we continued to climb.
    “Time to say hello,” I said, deciding to let them
know we weren’t as blind as they thought. I rolled the Lining sharply,
threw hard g’s at our internal acceleration field as I opened up the engines
and headed straight for the invisible contact.
    Jase braced, startled. “Skipper!”
    The contact marker flashed off to the side of the
screen with a burst of super acceleration, easily avoiding us. “That’s what I
was afraid of.”
    “What?”
    “They’re too fast to ram.”
    Jase looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m glad
of that!”
    “Izin, are they still matching us?”
    “Yes, Captain, same distance, same aspect as
before.”
    I nosed the Lining up, putting her back on
course for our bubble out point. “Enough games.” Whoever they were, we couldn’t
catch them or stop them following us. I figured they’d let us know what they
wanted when they were ready to talk.
    We continued climbing out of the atmosphere,
pursued by our invisible shadow, then three new contacts appeared beyond
minimum safe distance.
    “There they are!” Jase said as their signatures
appeared on screen. “No transponders!”
    They couldn’t be Earth Navy or UniPol, both of
whom broadcast who they were to ensure law abiding ships heaved to when ordered
to do so.
    “Let’s see them,” I said, angling our trajectory
away from the new contacts.
    Jase refocused our optics, putting the three
incoming