Smugger's Virtue (Lathos Galaxy Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Smuggler’s Virtue

  Lathos Galaxy Chronicles

  Luke Darko

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Lathos

  Chapter Two: Matt’s Mission

  Chapter Three: Mindfood

  Chapter Four: Orbit

  Chapter Five: Xandra’s Conquest

  Chapter Six: Nanotech

  Chapter Seven: Pocket Universe

  Chapter Eight: Space Fountain

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  Chapter One

  Every part of Matt Britton’s body ached. He tried his best to lie still, because even the slightest movement ratcheted the pain up a notch. It felt as if an entire building had fallen on him. Then he remembered. That was exactly what had happened.

  Xandra Torin wasn’t just some bored rich girl. She was the daughter of Maxall Torin, the Chancellor of Lathos. Of course he would send the military to bring her back, and of course he would tell them to stop at nothing to ensure that happened.

  The last thing Matt remembered was confronting her about the truth when Lathonian troops stormed the place and took Xandra, collapsing a wall on Matt in the process. They believed he was dead, and from the way he felt he wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong.

  He opened his eyes to try and get a better idea of the shape he was in. The room was bright and Matt had to squint until his eyes adjusted. It took a few seconds, but then he was able to see that he was in a plain hospital room with white walls and just the single bed. He saw a tube of some sort protruding from his left arm and knew he had an IV. He felt something pressing against each temple, so he gingerly lifted his hands to try and figure out why. Even that small movement brought considerable discomfort. He felt two pads attached to cables of some sort that were attached to his head. That’s when he realized he could hear the rhythmic “beep, beep, beep,” of a monitor that was probably keeping track of his vital signs. He turned his head, first left, then right. It hurt, but he was able to do it. Good, he thought. Nothing is broken.

  He saw the monitor on the wall to his right. On the black screen was a white outline of a body that Matt knew must be his. There were red lights flashing on the outline’s head, right arm and leg, and all across the chest. Matt knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that those were the areas on his body that hurt the most. He experimentally moved his arms and legs. They were sore, but it was nothing he couldn’t endure. He was right; none of his bones had been broken. He had just started to try and sit up when the door to his left opened.

  “Here, try this,” a man in a white jacket said, rushing over and placing his hand gently but firmly on Matt’s chest. Matt recognized him as the same doctor who had operated on Xandra. The man slid a table with some sort of control panel on it in front of Matt. When he touched a blue button at the bottom of the panel, the back of the bed began to incline, bringing Matt to a more upright position. When he was just a little past forty-five degrees, Matt held out his hand for the man to stop.

  “I’m guessing I have you to thank for the fact that I’m still living?” Matt asked with a creaky voice. He had no idea how dry his throat was until he tried to speak.

  “Actually,” said the doctor, handing him a glass of water from a table just to Matt’s left, “I didn’t do anything. You’re still alive due mainly to your own toughness and, I suspect, to a healthy dose of luck.”

  “Luck is a smuggler’s main virtue,” Matt told the doctor after taking a long drink of water. The doctor’s only response was a snort.

  “Then you must be the most virtuous man in the galaxy,” said a large man with a square jaw and cold black eyes as he swept into the room. Matt had given up trying to figure out Ilyea Kurt’s race a long time ago. The man had brought Matt plenty of work over the years and that was all that mattered, until now.

  “I ought to kill you,” Matt sneered into Ilyea Kurt’s satisfied smirk. “You sold me out.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” the big man said with a shrug. “I don’t like your chances though, especially not from that hospital bed.”

  “I always thought you were a man of honor,” said Matt. “It turns out you’ll do anything to make a quick profit.”

  “Matt, it isn’t like that,” Ilyea assured him. “You owed me money. I knew you were never going to pay, but as soon as you contacted me I knew I could get it all back with a little extra for the trouble you caused. Your face and that girl’s had been all over the news for a whole day before you showed up.”

  “So you contacted Lathos and just let them waltz into your secret base so they could take Xandra and me.”

  “Of course not,” Ilyea said. “Taking you was never part of the deal. How can you keep smuggling for me if you’re in prison? The fact that they think you’re dead makes it that much easier.”

  “You really believe I’d work for you again after what you did?”

  “Certainly,” said Ilyea, as if the very notion that Matt wouldn’t work for him again was the most foolish thing he’d ever heard. “Smuggling is what you do, and I have more work and pay better than anyone else. We’re a match made in heaven. Unless, that is, you’re planning on going after her.”

  Matt wanted to laugh at the very notion. Xandra was beautiful and exciting, and with just the right amount of vulnerability. She had stirred emotions in Matt that he never knew he had. Still, the woman had lied to him. He might be willing to forgive that. After all, he had lied to her, too. All of this was just a big adventure to her though. Now that it was over, she would probably just go back home and back to school to get on with her life. No matter how he felt, Matt wasn’t stupid enough to risk a return to Lathos under those conditions.

  “You don’t really think I’m that stupid,” he said, looking down as he ran his right hand through his disheveled mop of curly black hair.

  “I didn’t used to think you were that stupid,” the big man said, “until I saw the way you looked at her. I’ve seen love enough times to recognize it now.”

  “Even if that were true, it doesn’t matter. She’s had her fun. I’m sure that by now reality has set in and she’s only thinking about how to make up the class time she’s missed back at that university.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ilyea. “The last I saw her she was still screaming your name and begging General Ragen to let her come back and find you.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Matt scoffed.

  “If you say so, but like I said, I can tell when someone’s in love.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Matt, scratching his thin black beard. “They’re probably halfway back to Lathos by now.”

  “Actually they just took off a few minutes ago. It took awhile to get the reward properly transferred, not to mention agree on a price for all the damage they caused. Their huge military transport only travels at about half the top speed of your ship.”

  “They think I’m dead,” said Matt, the wheels starting to turn in his mind. “I could probably get onto their ship easily enough. I don’t know though. Even if I do have feelings for Xandra, it’s a hell of a risk just to get her back. I’ve only known her a few days.”

  “There is one other thing you should know,” said Ilyea. “In my time on this side of the galaxy, I’ve learned a little about Lathos and her politics. This General Kellenar Ragen has political ambitions of his own. From what I hear, he’s set on being Chancellor, but even if he can find a way to get rid of Maxall Torin, the job falls to his daughter.”

  “From what I know about Xandra, she doesn’t want the job,” said Matt. The whole time they were talking he couldn’t get the picture of
Xandra’s beautiful gray eyes out of his mind. That one night they had spent together on his ship had been incredible.

  “I don’t think General Ragen is the kind of guy to take chances. He has Xandra and a built-in excuse if anything were to happen to her. The entire planet of Lathos thinks you kidnapped her.”

  “You think he’s planning to kill her?” asked Matt, his attention now fully on their conversation.

  “Some of his men were hurt in the raid. He made sure to take on medical supplies for them. Xandra was still awfully weak when they left but he didn’t even bother to ask about what she needed. My guess is he’s hoping she dies on her own. But if she doesn’t, well, let’s just say that I’m pretty sure his soldiers are loyal to him first and foremost.”

  “I never would have believed this about you, Ilyea,” said Matt with a surprised grin. “You’re a romantic.”

  “I think the damage to your head is worse than the doctor first thought.”

  “Why else would you tell me all of this? You know that I have feelings for Xandra. You want me to go after her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ilyea said with an emphatic shake of his massive head. “We’re just talking. For the record, I think that trying to chase down a military transport that is currently traveling on a direct path to Lathos at approximately half her top speed to remove Xandra Torin from said ship is a foolish idea. It would take an incredible amount of piloting skill and dumb luck to pull that off.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing I have plenty of both,” said Matt, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and pulling the IV out of his arm. When he pulled the cables from the sides of his head, the monitor on the wall went dark.

  “Mr. Britton, I must advise against leaving,” the doctor said. “You have a concussion, several cracked ribs, and your entire body is basically one massive bruise from head to toe. You are in no condition to travel.”

  “I appreciate your concern, doctor, but I doubt I can afford to stay for even one day in Ilyea Kurt’s care. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but I’ll be fine. For now, I have a ship to catch.”

  “Your ship is in hangar eight, just where you left her,” said Ilyea. “My men installed a new shield generator and restocked your food stores. You can’t live on chocolate and pizza.”

  “What’s that going to cost me?” asked Matt dryly.

  “I just added it to Ragen’s bill. He was so intent on getting Xandra off this moon I could have installed ionic phase weapons on your ship, charged it to him, and he never would have stopped to question it.”

  “Did you?” asked Matt with a hopeful grin. He jumped off the bed to test his strength. His ribs were sore and his head was too, but most of what he felt was just general stiffness.

  “Now you’re pushing it,” said Ilyea as the two men headed out of Matt’s room and down a long white corridor. With each step Matt could feel the stiffness abating. The ache in his ribs and head was another matter, but Matt knew it was nothing that would slow him down too much.

  He knew what he was about to do was crazy, but Ilyea Kurt was right. He was in love with Xandra. Not only did he want her back, but he knew he had to do anything he could to get her away from her father’s biggest rival. Once he did that, they could figure out the rest together, after he told her who he really was.

  “I don’t care what you say, Ilyea. You really are a romantic at heart.”

  “I’m just telling you what I know,” the man insisted as they made it to the exit at the end of the hallway. Ilyea pressed his hand to a metal plate and the door slid open to reveal a ground transport waiting to take Matt back to his ship. “What you do with that information is your choice, misguided as it might be.”

  “If you say so,” said Matt as he climbed into the backseat of the ground transport. As he started to close the door, he turned back to the man when another thought occurred to him. “I don’t suppose your men fixed the interior lighting on my ship?”

  “Trust me; no one wants to get a better look at the inside of that rust bucket.”

  “Thanks for everything, Ilyea. You’re a good friend. You know, except for the part where you sold Xandra and me out for profit.”

  “I told you, that was just business,” said Ilyea. “Now your debt to me is paid and things can go back to the way they were between us. I just can’t believe you let yourself fall for the first pretty face that smiled at you.”

  “She’s more than that,” said Matt with a serious look.

  “Oh, I know. She’s got a great body, too.”

  “Like I said, you’re a romantic.”

  Chapter Two

  Kellenar Ragen looked down at the unconscious body of Xandra Torin and shook his head. He wished that Ilyea Kurt hadn’t gone to all the trouble to have his medical staff tend to her wounds. From the medical report, it looked as if she might have died from the wounds she had received otherwise. It would be so much more convenient if the girl would just die on her own.

  Ragen looked every bit the part of a military leader. Tall, with broad shoulders and sharp brown eyes that took in everything, he was the living embodiment of authority. Despite that, he had spent his entire military career in the shadow of Maxall Torin, and he was ready to step out from that shadow and show everyone what true leadership looked like.

  When the two men were younger and Lathos was yet to be a unified planet, Torin had led a military coup and then, before the dust had settled and anyone had a chance to process what had happened, he and Ragen led a daring attack to bring all the nation-states of the planet under one rule.

  Since then, however, Torin had grown soft. Rather than attack the other planets in the system and bring them under Lathonian rule as well, Maxall Torin instead chose to trade with them. Lathos had more than enough natural and industrial resources to make this happen, and the planet was still recognized as the leader of the system, if not the entire sector. The problem was that if the other planets decided to do business elsewhere, then Maxall Torin’s economic empire would crumble overnight.

  If that happened, then any use of the military by Lathos to try to bring them back in line could be met by outside forces trying to protect their new trading partners. Kellenar Ragen had always thought it was better to conquer those planets before they had a chance to make any other diplomatic alliances. Just because they hadn’t so far didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

  “What is Miss Torin’s condition?” Kellenar asked the young medic who was tending to their passenger. The girl was about the same age as Xandra Torin and had training as a field medic, but she wasn’t a doctor. This didn’t matter to Kellenar. Keeping Xandra alive was not a priority.

  “She had internal injuries that were recently repaired,” the woman said as she looked at a monitor similar to the one in Ilyea Kurt’s hospital. The image of Xandra was glowing red virtually throughout her entire chest and abdomen. “She was just starting to recover from her surgery when we extracted her. Her body wasn’t given the time it needed to heal, and now it looks like those wounds have been reopened in the rush to get her out of there. Her condition is worsening.”

  “All of that is the fault of the man who took her in the first place,” said Kellenar, rubbing his thumb and forefinger along his jawline. “If anything happens, her blood will be on his hands.” Then he turned and walked out of the tiny room and headed for the ship’s command center. The transport vessel was huge and sprawling, and decidedly military. The metal alloy used in its construction was left unpainted and unadorned. Only light panels and computer terminals at regular intervals gave any decoration whatsoever.

  When he reached the turbo shaft, Kellenar pressed his hand to the metal plate to open the door and stepped inside. “Command center,” he instructed, and the small compartment began to move. In a few seconds the door slid open, and Kellenar stepped out into a room full of soldiers all looking at computer monitors and view screens. Some were navigating the ship as it made its way slowly back
to Lathonian space. Others were monitoring the ship’s various systems, making needed adjustments and recalibrations to keep her running smoothly.

  Kellenar barely noticed as he climbed the steps to his office, which looked out over everyone. His troops knew their jobs and he trusted that they would do them, every bit as much as he trusted their loyalty to him and not Maxall Torin. He sat down at his desk and opened the direct com link to the man who was still Chancellor for the time being. Once his heir-apparent was out of the way, Kellenar could focus on the slightly more difficult task of eliminating Maxall. He had no doubt the government would act quickly to name him the new Chancellor, and he had the loyalty of enough of the military to coerce any in that government who might waver.

  “I hope you have good news, General,” said Maxall Torin when his image appeared on the view screen.

  “I’m afraid the news isn’t entirely good,” Kellenar replied, putting on his best concerned look. “Your daughter suffered greatly at the hands of the man who abducted her. My medical staff and facilities are not equipped to treat her injuries properly. We are heading back to Lathos at top speed, but her condition is grave.” The Chancellor looked as if he might explode. Good, thought Kellenar, the more irrational he is, the easier it will be to catch him unawares when the time to eliminate him comes.

  “Did you capture the man who caused all of this?” asked Maxall. Maxall Torin was the same age as Kellenar but he looked at least a decade older. His hair, once the same brown as the general’s, was now completely gray. His hazel eyes looked tired and worn, and the lines that creased the man’s face seemed to deepen with each new worry. He was never equipped to rule an entire world, thought Kellenar, and the years of trying have taken their toll. He would be doing the Chancellor a favor by relieving him of this burden.

  “He was killed during your daughter’s rescue.”