Legacy (Heroes of the League Book 12) Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  About the Author

  Legacy

  Heroes of the League Book 12

  By Frank Carey

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2016 by Frank Carey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This story appeared previously as Smuggler’s Legacy.

  League Tale #19

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sitting alone in the conference room, Harmon Aymar, Prince Lucien to the Court of Ventos Prime, sat sipping his tea while waiting for the rest of the meeting participants to arrive. A blurred image of an alien spacecraft filled the room's main viewer. Harm studied it intently, like a cat studying a mouse, his yellow slit eyes darting first to the bow, then the stern, finally ending amidships. "Computer, playback transmission 01-06-28, time position 08-26," he said between sips. A series of tones emanated from the room speakers as Harm's long, pointed ears swiveled about. When the recording finished, Harm put his glass down and leaned back in his chair while pulling his braid over his shoulder. Being an elf, Harm found playing with his braid as relaxing as sipping iced tea.

  "Anybody ever accuse you of being a guy?" Ciara asked as she walked into the room. Ciara Devlin, Director of the Cube Research Center and Harm's other best friend in the universe, his wife, Marta, being the first, walked up to the podium and set out her briefing materials while Harm continued to play with his braid. "Could you stop that?" she asked. "You remind me of a two meter tall, twelve year old, human girl getting ready for her first dance."

  He smiled and stopped. He could tell his friend was under a lot of pressure as the station prepared for an invasion by people from another universe, so he cut her some slack. Normally, he would walk over, drape the braid over her shoulder, and suggest she give it a try. "Can I get you a drink?" he offered.

  Her shoulders slumped as she nodded. "Sorry."

  He grabbed an herbal tea and handed it to her. "Nothing to be sorry about."

  She sipped the hot beverage. "I picked a fine time to give up drinking," she said as she visibly calmed. "How the hell are you able to handle this so well?"

  "Practice. Lots of practice," he replied while picking up a report from her pile. "Morons." The document was a synopsis of a referendum being pushed through the Tralaskan government demanding the secession of Tralaska from the League.

  "They were never happy with the way 'their' League turned out. They wanted an empire and didn't get one," she said as she turned to the viewer. "Any idea what it's looking for?"

  "Logash. I think it’s looking for Logash, or at least one of their chest crystals."

  She snapped her head around to stare at him. "What?"

  "What you see on the screen is a looped video of the probe in a storage room aboard Vengeance. Our agent was able to record a transmission from the probe. With Ashley's and Ruby's help, I was able to decode part of the data stream. It contains the resonance signature for a Logash biocrystal."

  "Maybe they're looking for a synthetic crystal?"

  Harm shook his head. "Synthetics have a slightly different signature. No, the bastards are looking for my grandkids, and I think Muntz is behind it."

  "How? He couldn't possibly know about Ash, Grayson, or the other neoLogash."

  "He manipulated me to create Atmar, then tried to use us as an assassin. He used my DNA to create Shenda and her siblings so he could use them as a vessel for a demon. He created a super clone of himself to manipulate you and my mother. Knowing the unknowable should be easy-peasy for that monster."

  Ciara put her hand on his arm. "Easy there, Big Guy, nothing will happen to your grandchildren or the other neoLogash. You have my word. Now, why would Muntz need the Logash, or their new incarnation, the neoLogash?" she asked, referring to the long extinct Logash race that once inhabited this part of space. Today, for reasons still not known, pairings between Crystal elves and members of various League races have been begetting children with dominant Logash DNA. DNA implanted long ago by Logash seed ships, at least that was the story the AIs told, and the AIs had to know since they were there when the ships left the Logash home world.

  "Possibly to act as seeds for synthetic biocrystals. You can only use natural biocrystal to seed a synthetic. You only need a sample the size of a grain of salt to start a crystal, but it has to be from a living, breathing Logash, and the synthetic has to be started within two hours or sample collection. Unfortunately, this is all based on a single string of characters from a recording. I need proof."

  "What kind of proof?"

  "I need that probe."

  Ciara hung her head.

  Harm thought he heard weeping.

  She looked at him, laughing so hard that tears were pouring down her cheeks. "I knew it, you've lost your mind."

  "I have not lost it! I've only misplaced it."

  She stopped laughing and stared at him. "You're not kidding, are you? You can't be serious. Your evil clone twin is aboard that ship. He knows you; he knows your ships. You'd be escorted from the docks to Interrogation before your second foot hit the deck."

  He took her forearms in hand and looked at her with his eyebrows raised. "I have a plan."

  Before she could answer, the rest of the attendees walked in. "Hold that thought," she said as she returned to the podium to begin the briefing.

  ###

  Two hours later, after Ciara and the other presenters brought the attendees up to speed and all the questions had been asked and answered, she turned to Harmon. "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "Your plan. You said you had a plan," she replied before bringing up the video loop of the probe on the viewer.

  "Oh, that plan."

  Harm made his way to the podium and looked at crowd, the shaky footage playing on the viewer behind him. He then turned to the viewer and the video loop playing on it. "My plan is simple. We're going to buy that probe."

  ###

  "PS Vengeance, this is LTV Ascendant on final approach, over."

  "Ascendant, this is Vengeance Control. Please identify personnel and purpose of visit, over."

  "Vengeance, this is Capt. Jason Thurgood. With me is my wife, Dr. Nebulon Blyst, and our entour
age of six souls. Transmitting IDs now. We're here for the auction."

  "Copy that, Viscount Jurta. Transmitting coordinates for VIP slip. Welcome to Vengeance and have a nice day. Control out."

  "Thank you, Control. Ascendant out." Jason, dressed in a tuxedo with the royal seal of the House of Jurta on his cummerbund, turned to his passengers in the lounge. "Please bring your seats and tray tables to their upright positions, and make sure your seat belts are fastened. We are about to land."

  Sitting next to him in the copilot's seat was his wife, Nebulon. As usual for an op like this, she was dressed to the nines like her husband in a column gown in an iridescent fabric with a slit to mid-thigh which showed off her height. Behind them, five members of Cube covert security sat dressed in black suits appropriate for members of a private security force while the eighth member of the mission, Harmon, wore his usual smuggler outfit of black slacks, butterfly-skin boots, and white cotton shirt. As the others prepared for landing, Harm, already strapped in, sat back and continued to read his romance novel. "Are we disturbing you, Harm?" Nebulon asked with a smirk.

  "Naw. It's kinda nice having someone else do the driving," he replied. "An elf could get used to this."

  "Right," Jason said before turning his attention to the mission. "Remember, Alpha team waits in the hallway while Nebs and I attend the auction. Harm, you monitor in case of problems."

  "Got it, Boss. At the first sign of this op going sideways, I'll fire-up the engines and prep for immediate lift-off. Until then, I monitor," Harm replied.

  Jason looked at Nebulon who looked back and nodded. "And Harmon," Nebs said with a demur smile.

  "Yes, Doctor?"

  "Try not to piss them off while you hack their systems."

  "Me? Upset them? Never!"

  Jason tilted his head back and silently prayed to the Tralaskan gods to save him from the elf and his machinations.

  ###

  While Alpha Team waited outside, Jason and Nebulon attended the auction. Sitting in ultra-plush seating and eating delicacies from around the League, they bid on sundry artifacts and trinkets while waiting for the probe to come up on the block. "Would you care for a refill of your drinks, Viscount? Doctor?"

  Nebs and Jason looked up and nearly had heart attacks when they saw Harmon standing next to them, holding a tray of full champagne flutes. "My name is Commodore Atmar," he said as he took their empty glasses and replaced them with full ones. "Enjoying the auction?"

  "Thank you," Nebulon said while forcibly retracting her claws. She had read both Harmon's and Atmar's dossiers before coming on the mission, so she knew Atmar, Harm's disassociated personality inside a super clone, was more dangerous than a hungry, cornered wombat. "Yes, we are enjoying the auction. How is Adm. Mitrell doing these days?"

  "Thank you for asking. She is fine as is our child which is due any day now. I can't wait to meet her."

  Jason smiled at the elf while his blood pressure tanked at the thought of a daughter of this creature running around with the resources of the pirate fleet behind her. "You are truly blessed."

  "Thank you. Tell me, where is my brother, Harmon?"

  "Last I heard, Prince Lucien was attending court on Ventos Prime. I hear he's given up the smuggling life to devote more time to being a prince," Nebulon said without missing a beat.

  "So, you know him?" Atmar asked.

  "Of course," Jason said. "His wife is a major trainer in the Suit Fighting League, a mainstay of Tralaskan professional sports."

  "Ah, Marta, Harm's little Marine wife. Well, I must attend to my other guests. Please, let any staff member know if you need anything. Good day, and good luck with your bidding," Atmar said as he stood up and walked away, leaving the two OffSec agents to calm their nerves.

  "Wow," Jason said. "It’s one thing to read about him in a report, but meeting him in real life is orders of magnitude more frightening."

  "I'm having trouble believing he and Harm are related," Nebs said as she shook her fingers in an attempt at getting the claws back into place. "Every fiber of my being was screaming for me to go full Tyen on him. Harm is so nice and Atmar is so...so...so evil."

  "He has his good points," Harm said over the sub-audible communicators embedded in their mastoid bones. "He really is a sharp dresser."

  Nebs looked at her husband in horror, mouthing "Oops." "Sorry, Harm," she said into the SAC, "we forgot you were monitoring."

  "Not to worry, Nebulon. Remember, Atmar did try to kill my daughter."

  The two agents were happy when the next item was put on the auction block was the probe.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer said, "this next item is an artifact from the edge of League space. Our experts put its age at several thousand standard years and its construction suggests it is from the long-dead Sangalor race."

  "Bullshit," Nebulon growled. "That thing is as much Sangalor as I'm Katalan."

  "Easy there, Doc," Harm said silently. "We're here to buy the thing, not correct our hosts."

  "Hrmph," Nebulon replied as Jason began bidding at one hundred thousand credits. Having established a fifty million credit line of credit with the Vengeance’s bank through one of Harm's blind shell corporations, Jason and Nebulon would have no problem beating out anyone in the room. Bidding continued at a fever pitch until only Jason was left with a CR5.2 million bid. With the final drop of his gavel, the sweating auctioneer sealed the deal.

  Instead of leaving immediately, Nebulon and Jason stayed and bid on several more items, including an Erdexi adamantine-gold dinner set from the era prior to the Erdexi flight to Rhanna. She knew the Rhanna Museum of Antiquities would love it, so she paid a premium to get it. Before the next item was put up for bidding, Harm called to tell them the probe was safely aboard the Ascendant. Hearing this, Jason and Nebulon bid adieu, gave the auction's master of ceremonies a large tip as they exited the room, and headed back to their ship with entourage in tow.

  "Harmon, we're on the move," Jason said silently into the SAC. The beauty of the SAC is that no one other than Harm and him could hear conversation. The system used telepresence technology to convert thoughts into electronic pulses that were transmitted to the receiver where they were converted to bone vibrations. The SAC system revolutionized covert operations around the League.

  "Copy that, Jason. Be advised that the security channels are carrying only normal traffic. Also, the rest of your booty has been delivered, including the Erdexi dining set."

  Silence.

  "Jason, you with me?"

  Silence. Harm scanned the security channels again. This time, though, they contained a security alert. Atmar had ordered a team to meet him at the same coordinates as Jason and his team.

  "Dammit!" Harm said as he ran to the cockpit to activate the auto-preflight. Moments later, he was out the door.

  ###

  Jason and the Alpha Team looked on in horror as Atmar held a blaster to Nebulon's head. "So, we meet again, Dr. Blyst. Tell me, how is it that people as wealthy as you and your husband need financing from one of my brother's shell companies?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about,” Jason said. “We're using money from one of my family's accounts. House Jurta has dozens of holdings. Now, let my wife go and I will forget this ever happened."

  Atmar swung his blaster to point at Jason. "Don't try to bullshit me, Agent Thurgood. Who do you think taught Harmon how to hack? I cut through Harmon's defenses like a hot knife through soft plastic..." He stopped and screamed as Nebulon snapped his wrist, disarming him instantly. Fully Tyen, she picked him up and threw him against the corridor wall, holding him there with her left hand while raising her right hand, its claws fully extended.

  "Nebulon, stand down!" Harmon yelled as he rounded a corner with blaster drawn. He stopped when she turned toward him, her eyes glowing and fangs at full extension. "Nebs, please, let him go."

  "He tried to kill your daughter," she said in a voice that caused the Alpha Team to step away from her. It was t
he sound of vengeance.

  "Yes, he did. He also stopped me from killing myself. He kept us alive for four years while I was in catatonic shock. I owe him my life, and his," Harm said slowly, with a calm that belied his inner turmoil. "We need to go."

  She tilted her head slightly before dropping the unconscious clone to the floor just as the Vengeance security detail ran up with weapons at the ready.

  "What the hell took you so long, Lieutenant?" Harm barked. "Do I have to do everything myself?"

  "Sir?" the leader said. She stopped when Harm looked at her with his best Atmar stare. "Sorry, sir. What do you want us to do with them?"

  "Them? These people are my guests. Harmon came upon us and tried to kidnap me, but Dr. Blyst knocked him unconscious before he could do any damage. Take him to the infirmary and wake him, Lieutenant," Harm ordered.

  "Yes, sir..."

  "And see that no harm comes to him, understand, Lieutenant?"

  The Lieutenant blanched at the implied threat in that command. "Yes, sir. He will be treated with the utmost respect, sir!"

  "Very good, Lieutenant. Now, get him and yourselves out of my sight!"

  "Yes, sir!" she yelled as her team picked up Atmar and disappeared down the corridor.

  When they were gone, Harm turned to the others and said, "We really need to go. Ascendant is double-parked in a tow-away zone with the engine running."

  They skedaddled as if being chased by a horde of demons.

  ###

  Everyone relaxed once the Ascendant was in other-space on a heading back to the Cube. While Jason drove the bus and Alpha Team changed outfits, Harm and Nebulon tried to keep out of the way.

  "Harmon, thanks for stopping me from killing Atmar. Sometimes, my Tyen side gets a little cranky."

  "You're welcome. I have to admit, I would find watching me getting torn apart by an angry Tralaskan demigod a little disconcerting." He stopped and leaned back in his seat. "I'm not being completely honest. I do have an ulterior motive for keeping him alive."

  "Go on."

  "Atmar and I are the only known example of a disassociated personality taking up residence in another body. Many in the medical community are of the opinion that our lives are inextricably linked on a psychic level."