Spacers: Free Space by Scott Bartlett

Author:Scott Bartlett [Bartlett, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mirth Publishing
Published: 2019-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Valkyrie Station

Herward System, Kreng Region

Earth Year 2290

Life aboard the merchant freighter was dull, but Mittelman found ways to amuse himself.

He had no need to follow the shipboard routine, and he didn’t, instead coming and going as he pleased. The merchant who owned the vessel, a man named Grimes, let him share the crew lounge and facilities, since the ship wasn’t big enough for separate passenger compartments. Taking passengers at all was a sideline for a ship like this.

The crew spaces were well-kept, and Mittelman considered that lucky. When you take the first vessel leaving a planet, you don’t get to be choosy, and he could have just as easily ended up in a bacteria-infested, spacefaring cesspool.

By happenstance, one of the deckhands worked for Mittelman, though he didn’t know it. His spies rarely knew who they truly reported to. Instead, he used a network of trusted intermediaries to relay pertinent intel to him, and often they didn’t even know.

He didn’t talk to his spy aboard this ship, except in passing, but the man seemed ordinary enough. The ordinary ones made the best informants. The ones who looked like they were made for the shadows were best avoided, since everyone suspected them from the outset.

It would be the epitome of foolishness to try to extract information from the crewman directly. But Mittelman had taken the liberty of placing listening devices throughout the vessel, and he occupied himself by eavesdropping on the crew’s conversations.

Mittelman had been born for the shadows. Born to peep through keyholes and listen through walls. He did everything he could to hide it, but his nature was his nature, and he knew he wouldn’t have made a good spy himself. He made a much better spy master.

The talk of the merchant freighter for the last two days had been the news that Kibishii’s CEO was calling for Herwin Dirk, leader of Daybreak Combine, to expel Meridian from the alliance for their transgressions against the Japanese corp.

“Dirk’s pretending like he doesn’t know anything about it,” Mittelman’s spy said in one such conversation, his voice captured by the near-microscopic device Mittelman had placed under the lip of the table in the middle of the crew lounge. Mittelman lay on his bunk, staring at the overhead and listening through an earpiece.

“The bastard knows Meridian did it.” The spy gave a braying laugh. “Everyone knows. But Dirk’s corp has been in bed with Meridian way too long for him to actually do anything about it. Kibishii’s barking up the wrong money tree.”

Mittelman barked a laugh of his own, then frowned. This spy was more clever than he would have expected, or wanted. And he was too free with his gossip. Perhaps he would need to be cut loose.

He was right about Dirk’s corp, Paragon Industries. It and Meridian had had been partners for decades, propping up each other’s bottom lines and burying each other’s dirty laundry. Meridian probably had plenty to hang over Paragon, and vice versa. There was no way Dirk would act against them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.