by Terry Mixon
“True.” Brad hesitated for a moment. “There should be room for both of us, if we’re careful.”
“Since there are two of us, why don’t we see if we can show each other anything?”
Brad thought about it and shrugged. Carefully tucking the deactivated practice sword under his arm, he offered his hand. “Brad Madrid.”
The blond man took it. “John Marshal.”
Brad extracted another practice blade from the cabinet and tossed it to the other man. He caught it in a smooth motion.
“I think it would be best if we worked out where each other stands before we start learning from each other,” Marshal said.
“What do you have in mind?”
The shorter man grinned. “I was thinking a little sparring match.” With that, the blond raised the practice blade in salute, flicking the switch that armed the shock circuit.
Brad nodded wordlessly and raised his own blade in response. He armed the shock circuit and immediately lunged at the other man.
Marshal’s grin faded as Brad’s attack surged in. The man managed to parry, but Brad brought the practice blade flashing back in before he could launch an attack of his own. Four times the man managed to parry Brad’s strikes, each time moving the blade just enough to deflect the attack.
He deflected Brad’s fifth attack slightly harder, sending Brad’s blade to one side, and flicked his into Brad's exposed shoulder.
Brad grunted as the circuit flashed its shock into him, and stepped back. He raised his blade in salute, acknowledging his defeat.
Marshal raised his own blade in response. “You’re very fast and quite good, Mr. Madrid. What rank are you?”
“I don’t hold an official rank,” Brad lied with a shrug. “I’m not entirely self-taught, but it’s been completely private.”
Which wasn’t exactly true, but it was Brad Mantruso that had earned the rank of First Blademaster. Brad Madrid had no such rank.
Marshal nodded. “I hold the rank of Third Blademaster.” That was roughly equivalent to a third-degree black belt in the older martial arts.
The other man returned his blade to the salute. “Again.”
This time, Brad held his blade at guard. For a moment, neither of them moved, and then Marshal lunged in. Brad knocked the other man’s blade out to the side and thrust.
Marshal twisted out of the path of his attack and brought his own blade slashing back in. Brad allowed his left knee to collapse under him, dropping beneath the path of the blade as he brought his own blade snapping back toward the other man, twisting it across to slash into Marshal’s side.
The practice blade sparked as it flashed its charge into the older man. Marshal grunted and lowered his blade in defeat.
“Well done. Very well done, in fact,” Marshal said. “You have a great deal of natural talent, but—no offense intended—you could use more finesse.”
Brad shrugged. “I’ve never needed it before.”
Marshal looked at him oddly. “And you think you need it now?”
Brad hesitated for a moment, wondering whether this stranger could be trusted with even a fraction of the truth…and then nodded. “Yeah. I think I may.”
“I can teach you,” the older man offered.
“Why?” Brad asked, willing but suspicious.
“Because I’ve got nothing better to do for the next two weeks,” the older man replied with a shrug. “Coincidentally, that’s about how long I think it’ll take for me to you teach most of what I know that you don’t. The basics of it, anyway. You’ll still have a lot of practice ahead of you to make it natural. Interested?”
Brad smiled. “Very. Thanks.”
Several hours later, breathing heavily, Marshal tossed the practice blade to the side. “I think that’s enough for one night.”
“It’s been educational,” Brad replied. The other man had worn him out enough that the constant murmur of his anger was quieter now.
Brad collected the other man’s blade and put them both away. The older man had put him through a series of drills, some of which he’d known, some of which he hadn’t.
He turned back to find the older man watching him.
“I don’t know about you, but I need a drink. Care to join me?”
“There’s a bar on the ship?” Brad asked, before mentally slapping himself. It was a transport primarily carrying workers to the Outer System. Of course there was a bar.
“Yup. You drink beer?”
“No. I drink vacuum and starlight,” Brad replied dryly, the other man bringing out a humor he’d almost forgotten.
“Well, I don’t know if the bartender knows how to make fancy-assed drinks like that,” Marshal told him with a grin, “but they do have some decent beer on this tub.”
Brad inclined his head. “Show me the way.”
The place seemed rather crude, with no decoration on the bare metal bulkheads or padding on the seats. Still, even at the early hour—or late, depending on how you wanted to judge it—the bar had a healthy number of patrons.
“So, what do you do?” Brad asked Marshal as they settled down at a corner table a few minutes later.
“I’m a pilot,” the older man told him with a small gesture at their surroundings, with a hint of embarrassment. “A little down on my luck, obviously. Until about a week ago, I was a courier pilot with StarCorp.”
Brad whistled silently. StarCorp was the largest corporation there was off Earth. They were big enough that even pirates hesitated before messing with them. StarCorp had both the cash and the will to see pirates who touched their ships dead. Messily.
“Yeah. It was one heck of a sweet deal. Money, glamor, excitement—I’ve even run away from or fought pirates a time or two.” He finished his beer and signaled the serving robot for another. “A very sweet deal.”
The mention of pirates soured Brad’s mood, but he was getting used to controlling his anger now and covered his reaction. “So, what landmine did you step on?”
Brad silently noted the speed with which the pilot had finished his drink. He was less than halfway through his own beer.
Marshal shrugged. “To make a long story very short, I went clubbing, got drunk, and woke up in bed with the local boss’s daughter. I was still drunk enough to tell the old man to go fuck himself when he came in.”
Brad watched as the man’s second beer arrived and he drained it. The got drunk part of the story was certainly believable.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re on this tub. Last I’d heard, there’s a shortage of pilots pretty much systemwide.”
“Yeah, but nobody in the Inner System is going to touch someone that StarCorp has blacklisted,” Marshal said quietly. A third beer arrived and the man treated it the same as the first two.
Brad nodded carefully. “So, you’re going to the Outer System, looking for work?”
“Right. Out there, no one cares if you’re blackballed or not.” Marshal looked at Brad with a piercing gaze that belied his oncoming drunken state. “Your turn. What’s a trained security man doing heading into the Outer System under a false name, ‘Mr. Madrid?’”
Brad’s anger spiked and he began to lean forward threateningly before he managed to stop himself.
“You seem to be making a few assumptions,” he told Marshal with carefully forced calm. “Why would you think I’m using a false name and what makes me a security man?”
“You sure as hell didn’t learn to fight in bars, kid. The way you move, the way you’ve learned to fight, those’re marks of a professional fighter. You’re not callous enough to be a pirate and you’re too green to be a merc.”
The other man grinned. “On top of that, it always takes you a moment or two to reply to ‘Madrid.’”
Brad glanced down at the four empty beer bottles by Marshal’s elbow. The two men had only been there twenty minutes. “I think you may be too observant for your own good, Mr. Marshal.” He made sure his voice was cold.
The grin vanished off t
he other man’s face. “I’m not going to tell anyone, kid. I don’t have an agenda. I just want to help you out. I won’t mention your past again. It’s your business. Brad.”
Brad hesitated for a moment before speaking. “I’ll take you at your word, then. John.”
Marshal nodded firmly and stood. “Excellent. I’ll bid you farewell and good night, then. I’ll meet you in the gym at the same time tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.” Brad twisted in his chair to let Marshal past. He turned back to the table and was about to order another drink when he heard a thudding sound behind him.
He turned to find that Marshal had somehow collided with another man and they’d both ended up on the floor. Both were standing back up, and the burly, shaven-headed guy had an ugly expression on his face.
“Think you can shove Doug Chenk around, pansy boy? You’re going to wish you’d never been born.”
“Hey, it was just an accident, man,” Marshal said, backing away and raising his hands in a placating gesture.
“Then you won’t mind when I ‘accidentally’ carve your face off, you little puffball,” Chenk snapped, his hand darting inside his open leather vest.
Brad surged to his feet, drawing and activating his blade as he moved. It stopped Chenk’s blade a foot from Marshal’s face.
“This is none of your concern, tall boy,” Chenk spat as he stepped back.
The other patrons were scurrying clear around them. No one wanted a wildly swung blade to cut them in half. The bartender was shouting something, but Brad couldn’t spare the man any attention.
“Back off,” Brad said curtly. He was perfectly willing to let the other man volunteer as a target for him to vent some of his rage, but this wasn’t the place or time.
He watched the man carefully as he moved between the threat and Marshal. Chenk was a head shorter than he was but probably weighed half again as much. All of it muscle.
“Like fuck I will,” the man snarled. “Get out of my way or join him in a gizzard sandwich.”
The man matched actions to words by lunging at Brad. Brad deflected the thrust with a flick of his blade, unbalancing the other man in the process. He took advantage of that by shoving him away.
“One last chance,” Brad said coolly. “Walk away and we can all forget this happened.”
He saw Chenk’s eyes flick left and right, taking in the dozen or so passengers in the bar, and swore mentally. The man wasn’t going to back down in front of an audience.
“Fuck you, prick,” Chenk hissed as he began to warily circle Brad.
Brad heard another blade activate behind him and knew that Marshal was preparing to enter the fight. With all the alcohol the man had consumed, he’d rather not risk it.
“I have this,” Brad said as he brought his blade into the guard position and made a small come on gesture toward Chenk with his free hand. He got the expected reaction as the bald man lunged forward, his blade slashing at Brad’s neck.
He parried the blade, caught the man’s wrist in his left hand, and twisted it back. Tendons popped as the other man swore in pain. His blade dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
Safety cutoffs deactivated the charge to the filament as the blade fell, and Brad drove the heel of his foot into Chenk’s kneecap with a loud pop.
The man hit the deck with a resounding thump and howl of agony just as a trio of Rain’s security men came charging in, stun-sticks at the ready.
He deactivated his blade and holstered it before turning to face them with his hands empty.
Chapter Five
A pair of security men escorted him to the captain’s office. Neither looked very friendly, so he leaned against the wall and waited in silence once they got there. Perhaps ten minutes went by before the door opened and a regular crewman came out.
“The old man wants to see you now,” he told Brad. He glanced at the guards. “Just him, though. You can head back to your posts. I’ll take his weapons for now.”
“Ja, sir,” one of them replied as he handed Brad’s weapon’s belt to the man. With that, the guards left.
The speaker gestured towards the door. “In with you.”
Brad shrugged and stepped through the open hatch.
As he entered, he glanced around the room. It was relatively spartan, with only a single bookshelf—mostly filled with bric-a-brac rather than books—providing the sole break in the plain metal bulkheads. The desk was equally basic, a simple metal surface suspended on two filing cabinets with a computer console.
All in all, the room provided no excuse for him not to look at Louisiana Rain’s captain, so he did. The man’s head was shaved, with slight blond fuzz apparently starting to grow back in. It was impossible to guess his height with him sitting down.
The man said nothing as his crewman laid Brad’s weapons belt on the desk in front of him and departed without another word, closing the door behind him.
“My name is Hans Jaeger,” he said with a noticeable German accent as he gestured toward the weapons on his desk. “I am the captain of Louisiana Rain. You may have these back. Please, have a seat.”
Brad strapped the belt back around his waist and sat in the indicated chair, feeling more comfortable now he was armed. “I expected you to confiscate them.”
“For fighting?” Jaeger asked with a chuckle. “Hölle, Mr. Madrid, I should probably be rewarding you. From what my bartender told me, and what the cameras showed, you ended that incident with the minimum amount of damage to all involved.
“Certainly, if you hadn’t become involved, Mr. Marshal would most likely be dead and I’d have a messy situation on my hands.”
He shrugged. “You did me a favor and I’m not one to let such things go unrewarded. Tell me, Mr. Madrid, what are you looking for in the Outer System?”
Brad blinked, a bit surprised at the unexpected question. “Work, mostly. There isn’t much left for me anywhere else, and it seems like a good place to start over.”
“That’s a fairly common story.” He held Brad’s eyes for a moment before he continued. “According to your ticket, you’re heading for Ganymede, correct?”
“Yes,” he replied, still rather uncertain where this was leading.
The captain leaned back in his chair. “I know a woman on Ganymede—an agent for the Mercenary Guild—who might be able to help you find work. Interested?”
Brad hesitated for a moment. The Mercenary Guild was well known, even in the Inner System, where many of its members were considered criminals.
The Guild functioned as an intermediary between those seeking to hire mercenaries and bounty hunters and the mercs themselves. It also did things like recruiting crewmen and troopers for mercenary commanders.
It wasn’t the sort of work Brad had originally been thinking of, but it had potential he hadn’t previously considered. It would give him a better chance to find and kill the Terror than wandering around. Not to mention an outlet for the anger-fueled violence that ran just under the surface these days.
“Very,” he replied firmly.
Jaeger plucked a business card from his tunic pocket and slid it across to Brad. It had basic information about the Guild and an individual on the card itself, and would have more detailed information on the chip inside it.
It simply read:
Sara Kernsky
Recruiting Agent
Mercenary Guild
“Thank you, Captain,” Brad said, tucking the card away.
“As I said, I return favors that are given to me. This concludes our business, but I have one more thing to say.” The Captain raised a warning hand. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t draw your weapons again for any less pressing reason than you did tonight. Clear?”
“Clear, Captain,” Brad said as he rose to his feet.
Brad found Marshal waiting for him when he arrived at the gym that night. The older man was sitting on one of the benches, a pair of practice blades leaning against the wall beside him. He looked up as Brad entered,
and inclined his head.
“It seems you regard any debt worth paying as worth exceeding. I owe you my life.”
“People die every day to disease, old age, or accident,” Brad said with a shake of his head. “I see no reason to allow that number to increase when it’s within my ability to change it.”
He’d lost enough that, so much as it was in his power, the only people who were going to die around him were pirates. Though he was planning on killing a lot of pirates.
“Nonetheless, I owe you my life and I won’t forget it.”
“I don’t demand repayment for what any man should do as a matter of course,” Brad told him levelly.
Marshal nodded, rose to his feet, and picked up the blades. “I’m not offering repayment yet. I’m merely acknowledging that a debt exists and that you may call it due at your will.”
Brad caught the practice blade Marshal tossed him and raised it in salute. “Maybe you can save my life one day.”
“Maybe so,” Marshal grinned as he returned the salute. “En garde, Mr. Madrid.”
Brad raised his sword to the high guard position as the two began circling. “My name is Brad. Hell, Mr. Madrid isn’t even my father.”
Brad leaned back in his chair at the bar, quietly sipping his beer. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Marshal making a pass at one of the unattached women on the ship. He liked the man, but he drank a lot and seemed incapable of resisting the temptation of a pretty lady.
The training had progressed very well over the last week. Brad thought he’d nailed the basics of what Marshal wanted to show him down, faster than the pilot had expected. The next week would cement them in his mind and make them natural. He still had a lot of practice to do, but it was a very good start to upping his game.
He finished his beer just as he noticed one of the security officers who’d picked him up after the earlier fight coming into the bar.
The man glanced at his wrist-comp, and the blood slowly drained out of his face. He turned and walked straight out of the bar.
Brad hesitated for a moment and then stood. Something was up. He smoothly followed the man deeper into the ship’s corridors. He hung back, watching as the man met with three of his fellow security officers.