by K S Augustin
The intruder stood still in the doorway and, with the visor reflecting the light, no face was visible. But Meyal couldn’t mistake the surprise and anger in its voice when it said, at the same time as Waryd, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Meyal paced the length of the Space, occasionally looking at Waryd and the young woman who had finally deigned to remove her imposing-looking helmet. Waryd was seated at the dining table, while the woman was leaning against the kitchenette counter.
“So you’re Waryd’s sister?” she asked, for the second time.
“The only person who knows how to crash a wonderful party,” Waryd added, clearly unhappy. “Meyal, may I formally introduce my baby sister, Callin Gosin.”
The woman called Callin threw her arms into the air. “Excuse me for busting all thrusters to get here, dearest brother. The minute I picked up a missile coming in hot from outside the system and extrapolated its trajectory, I knew you were in trouble. I thought I was rescuing you from a certain death, only to find your orbital so much charred shrapnel and you, on the other side of the planet, engaged in Happy Time with a complete stranger.”
Meyal didn’t know whether to die of embarrassment or get fired up with righteous anger.
“It happened then?” Waryd asked, his tone serious. “My orbital was destroyed?”
Callin referred to a display built into the forearm of her suit. “Only eight hours and forty-seven minutes ago.”
Waryd had the grace to look abashed. “Ah. Well. We, er, appear to have missed that.”
Meyal raised her voice. “What is going on?” she demanded. “You,” she pointed to Callin, “how did you know Waryd’s orbital was going to be destroyed? And you,” she pointed to Waryd, “what does all this mean?”
Neither answered for several long seconds, then Waryd beckoned to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll explain,” he said.
Meyal looked at the encouraging smile on his face, the grim features of his sister, and slowly approached the table, gingerly pulling a chair a little farther away from Waryd than was polite.
“All right,” she said, seating herself, “you can explain now.”
“My sister and I run a small, um, operation, out near the edges of the established creases. We dabble mostly in tradeable tech, stuff that usually only the big guys have. And we make a good living at it.” He shot a quick glance towards the counter, but Callin remained silent.
“You’re freelancers,” Meyal stated.
“That’s right. We’re freelancers. About a year ago, we decided to go for something big. Something nobody had attempted before. Mineral analysis.”
Meyal frowned. “Mineral analysis? You mean, like what we’re doing here?”
Waryd nodded. “Up till now, we’d only dabbled in small stuff, like thruster modifications and shield algorithms. It brought some money in—”
Callin snorted. With an angry look in her direction, Waryd raised his voice and continued.
“—but it wasn’t enough to support us long-term.”
“We were doing okay,” Callin interrupted.
“We were stuck in the baby leagues,” Waryd shot back, “hardly making more than hand-to-mouth, and you know it.”
He turned to Meyal and calmed his voice. “So, a year ago, I got the bright idea to…step up. Try something that had a better profit margin.”
“The problem was,” Callin added, “by now, everyone who was anyone in the Republic business world knew the names of Waryd and Callin Gosin, and they also knew my brother had a record as long as a crease from Earth to Alpha Centauri.”
“But,” he held up a finger, “I also knew that XeGeTech was about to fund a major expansion of its operations, and that its rivals would have to follow suit in order to stay competitive.”
“So you applied to XeGeTech for a job?” Meyal asked, trying to keep up with the flood of information.
“XeGeTech had very strict entry requirements,” Waryd demurred. “I knew I didn’t stand a chance with them. But, if they were pushing ahead, I thought that ExoSystems might get more than a little desperate. Their screening procedures had holes big enough for me to slip through.”
“What my brother’s trying to tell you, Ms. Lit, is that he bought the answers to several technical exams and, together with Exo’s security gaps, scammed his way to Falcin V as an exo-geologist.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Waryd declared to the room.
“Yeah,” Callin drawled. “Worked so well they sent you a missile as a quarterly bonus.”
“Hmmmm.” Waryd scratched his head. “I’m not sure what went wrong there.”
Finally, Meyal felt she had something to contribute to the conversation. “Well, we did take over ExoSystems,” she pointed out. “And my supervisor, Lewaya Phoenix, told me that the staff from ExoSystems had been run through the company’s screens a few days ago.”
Callin clicked her fingers. “That must be it. When they ran the Exo staff through their databases, it must have screamed ‘blue murder’ when it got to your name.”
“I am deeply misunderstood,” Waryd mourned, but there was a mischievous glint in his eye. Meyal couldn’t help but grin in response.
“They probably thought you would be stealing their tech,” Callin continued, “so they sent you an incendiary present.”
“But Meyal was smart enough to put two and two together and came and rescued me in time. Unlike, ahem, you, my larcenous sister.”
“Speaking of which, did you manage to get anything of value? Or,” Callin flicked a glance in Meyal’s direction, “were you preoccupied?”
“I only got their latest operating system, search algorithms, data archives for several sectors and a couple of their proprietary sensors.”
“So this whole operation isn’t such a bust after all.” Callin pursed her lips. “Well done, bro.”
“But there’s more,” he said. “ExoSystems has caveman technology next to XeGeTech.” He eyed Meyal. “And we happen to be on a XeGeTech orbital.”
Meyal shook her head. The movements began as slow shakes of her head, then gradually got faster. “Oh no. You’re not going to drag me into this piracy scheme.”
Waryd caught her gaze. “Think about it, Meyal. What’s going to happen once your supervisor gets the quarterly reports and sees that, not only have the inventory levels gone down faster than normal, but there were multiple exits and entrances to your orbital? How are you going to explain that away?”
“We could scrub the files,” she replied, but her voice was hesitant. The truth was, deleting the chat-sex sessions held in the Rec Space was one thing, but attempting to track down all the systems that recorded resource usage or orbital mechanics was a much more complicated task. She looked at Waryd and knew by the expression on his face that he had reached the same conclusion.
“Come with us,” he said, into the pool of silence that gathered.
“What?” That was Callin, jerking herself upright. She glared at her brother. “What did you just say?”
“Meyal comes with us,” he told her calmly. “We copy all the tech, grab some inactive probes, just like I did at the Exo orbital, and then take off.”
“Like hell,” his sister replied. “I didn’t work my arse off, buy a ship, and spend time and money cruising the creases just to let some freeloader join the team.” She suddenly stopped and had the grace to look abashed. “Er, no offence, Meyal.”
“I can understand your position,” Meyal said faintly, but her mind was on other things. The most pressing image was one of financial stability receding into the distance, followed closely by approaching scenes of her impending imprisonment. A small part of her brain registered that Waryd and his sister were bickering, but that wasn’t what was important. Meyal knew she had to think of herself. Herself and her family.
She didn’t want to turn Waryd in to XeGeTech. For one, it would be a waste of a damn good lover. But she didn’t want to go to prison either. And what about her family, struggling away on the ho
me planet? Was there any way she could satisfy all her needs?
It took several minutes of furious thinking before she looked up. “I have a proposal,” she said, her voice cutting through the sibling quarrel.
Both Waryd and Callin spun to look at her.
“We take the tech and, yes, we can take a couple of probes,” Meyal told them, “but they remain my property, just as the ExoSystems stuff remains Waryd’s.”
Waryd lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.
“We can just take the tech for ourselves,” Callin told her, her voice an insolent drawl. “We don’t need your permission. It’s called two-against-one.”
“No you can’t,” Meyal told her evenly, “because the XeGeTech pre-deployment sessions included proficiency in weapons use.”
Callin snorted. “There are no weapons on this orbital.” She turned to Waryd. “Are there, bro?”
“They’re hidden,” Meyal cut in, “but I know where they are.”
Waryd shrugged but his gaze remained trained on Meyal. “Could be she’s right, Cal. XeGeTech upgraded all their orbitals recently and I’ve heard rumours about weapons being deployed. Seems we freelancers have been a little too successful with our raiding recently.”
“You’re saying,” Callin asked loudly, “if we try to take the tech, you shoot us?”
Meyal nodded. “I may only manage to wound one of you, but it sounds like a good way to get back into XeGeTech’s good graces, doesn’t it? I fight a team of known freelancers, and all is forgiven.”
Callin eyed her closely. “Okay,” she said slowly, “so let’s assume the tech is yours. Then what?”
“Then you take me on board as a specialist. Not only do we sell the tech to customers, but I can train them in how to use it. For an added fee, of course.”
A grin started to split Waryd’s face, and even Callin’s expression calmed from its sullen distrust. Meyal held up a hand. “But there’s a condition.”
“Another one?” Callin’s voice was full of disdain.
“We use the initial proceeds to lift my family off Earth.”
“That can come out of your share,” Callin replied. “Got nothing to do with us.”
“You want the XeGeTech? Even Waryd says it’s more advanced than what ExoSystems has been using. You want it? Then my condition becomes your business.”
“Hey, who knows, sis?” Waryd cut in, his voice full of amusement. “This way, we might even end up a legit operation. Consulting fees plus software plus probe prototypes. We could buy ourselves a moon in a couple of years, if we play it right.”
“Consultant?” Callin mused.
“Consulting fees, training fees, analysis fees,” Meyal replied, her voice steady. “The list goes on.”
But Callin was not convinced. “And you’re willing to throw away your life and come with us, get branded as a criminal till the day you die, just so you can do some freelancer consulting?”
Meyal’s gaze remained steady. “As I see it, I’m buying a number of things with my offer – a new life for my family, which is all I ever wanted in the first place, and financial independence for myself. What it costs me is for me to decide.”
“C’mon, Cal,” Waryd wheedled. “We’ve wasted enough time already. Meyal says she’s in, and she has a cracker of an idea. I say, let’s run with it.”
Callin looked from one to the other```, then rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Okay. Let’s give it a trial run.”
“We can take some food and oxygen with us too,” Meyal added, “if your vessel’s big enough.”
“How much do you have?”
“At least six months’ worth of the good stuff. Food, juices, milk, cream. Plus enough water and compressed oxygen to see the three of us through for more than a year.”
“From the sounds of things, we’ll need to buy a bigger ship soon,” Callin grumbled, but her expression was upbeat and there was even a small smile on her lips.
“Tell me something,” Waryd said, much later when they were about to blow the orbital. (That had been Callin’s suggestion, as a way of confusing the people who came after them. “Who knows?” she had said with a shrug. “They might think you’re dead and your family might even get some compensation out of it while we build up our business.”)
Meyal paused in the act of putting on her helmet. “Yes?”
“The weapons you mentioned. Do they really exist?”
Meyal smiled and grabbed the collar of Waryd’s suit with a free hand. She pulled him towards her and planted a kiss on his mouth, before fastening her helmet.
She didn’t answer until Waryd was fully suited, aware that he was waiting impatiently for her reply.
“Well?” he repeated. “Do they?”
“What do you think?” she laughed, then they launched themselves into the abyss while Callin, who had gone on ahead, chivvied them on through their suits’ systems.
Author’s note
If you’ve read any of my previous stories set in the Republic, you will have noticed that the settings are usually far in the Republic’s future, after almost all of the galaxy’s hyperspace creases have been discovered. But it must have all started somewhere, right? Consider COLLATERAL DAMAGE one such point.
I had a lot of fun with this story, setting it back in the Republic’s past, when Earth was an actual planet rather than an element of myth, and the galaxy was much more chaotic than we’re used to from reading the existing Republic stories.
Would you believe, Meyal, Callin and Waryd end up rich and legitimate, and their descendants rival the notorious Carven family in terms of wealth and importance? Hmmm, now that I think of it, I believe there may be a story in that. ;)
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Kaz Augustin
Johor, Malaysia
January 2013
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Copyright page
Collateral Damage
ISBN 978-0-9873174-3-8
Copyright KS Augustin 2013
Edited by: H Hammond, John Young
Cover art: Sandal Press
A Sandal Press book
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