by Saxon Andrew
“First things first; what’s your name?”
“Leo.”
“Ok, I can see you’re going to be evasive so let’s cut to the chase.”
Leo smiled, “I highly recommend you do. I have things to do and you’re preventing me from doing them.”
“Before we start, I heard one of the Proctors say that you are a Purple Card Warrior. What exactly is that?” Leo stared at her and didn’t answer. “I want to make you an offer and I want to make sure you’re capable of doing what I need.”
“Exactly what do you need?”
“Were you serious about killing that pirate?”
“Pretty much every sentence I’ve ever heard with the word ‘killing’ in it was extremely serious.” Leo replied.
“I want to kill that pirate but the reality of my being able to do it is remote. Can you do it?”
The young man stood up and she grabbed his arm, “Please, don’t go!”
“Then you better give me one good reason why I should continue listening to this nonsense.”
“I will support your effort to do it.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed, “Support?”
“You must be aware of who my father is, I mean was?”
“I have no idea who he was and what does that have to do with our discussion?”
“My father was the wealthiest man in this quadrant.”
Leo stared at her and sat back down, “I don’t want to call you a liar, but I’ve seen the list of the top twenty five wealthiest families in this quadrant, and your father’s name wasn’t on the list.”
“That pirate attacked our liner to get at what my father had placed in the wall safe. That should tell you something.”
“That doesn’t make him one of the wealthiest men in this quadrant. I do know his name is not on the wealthiest list.”
“That’s because he uses his mother’s maiden name and not his own when he travels.”
“What is his name?”
Serge Ohaulo Romanov.” The young man stared at her in silence. She waited and finally broke the silence, “I’m reasonably sure you doubt what I’m telling you.”
“You think?”
“What’s the main reason you don’t believe me?”
“Well, for starters, why would the richest man on this side of the galaxy be traveling with his family without defenses to protect them? That’s not something that a smart merchant would do and I’m certain the head of the Romanov Family wouldn’t do it either.”
“He wouldn’t trust anyone else with this transfer.”
“Why not.”
“Because anyone else would have given in to that pirate and revealed the code to save themselves.”
“Your father was pretty stupid for not giving it to them. Wealth can be replaced but there is no replacing dead.”
“There were eight trillion credits in that safe, Leo.”
For the first time, she saw the young man show emotion, “That’s impossible!! No safe can hold that many credits!! Hell, four ships that size couldn’t hold it.”
“The safe had two hundred and twenty pounds of Trillium in it estimated to be worth eight trillion credits.”
Leo leaned back in the booth, “Why, for creation’s sake, would anyone be moving that rarest of metals on a commercial liner? A tenth of an ounce of trillium is worth more than the entire liner and a gram of it would destroy an entire city out to two hundred miles. A few atoms of Trillium injected into a reactor will extend the life of the fuel ten times its normal life. Moving that much on a Starliner is absurd!”
“Because of the sheer audacity of it. No one would ever expect him to do it and he thought using his mother’s maiden name would allow him to go unnoticed.”
“Someone noticed!”
“I know. And they knew he had the code to the safe. My father would have let all of us die and never reveal the code.”
“Why?”
“Because more than a billion middle class workers on our planet gave him their life savings to invest in a new company. They would have been destitute if he had given the pirate that code. He chose to die first.”
“What happens now that he’s dead and no one knows the code?”
“I know it.”
“WHAT!!! You’ve got to be…”
“What, crazy?”
Leo sighed, “That pirate had information that could only have been passed to him by someone occupying a high position inside your father’s company. They knew about your mother, sister, and you, as well as your sister’s baby, traveling with him. They also knew the name your father was using.”
“I don’t think they knew what was in the safe.”
Leo stared at her and then slowly nodded, “You’re right. The pirate would not have flown away so quickly if he knew how much was in it. He would have brought a pirate fleet with him to take possession.”
“It would have been a waste of time. Without the code, the safe could not be opened without destroying the contents.”
“Were the contents insured?” Leo asked.
“No, to start with, who would insure that much and purchasing the insurance, if anyone was willing to take that sort of risk, would have made the contents known to others that would possibly take the risk of stealing it. Like I said, my father was audacious.”
“Whoever educated that pirate didn’t know you knew the code.”
“Or that the woman traveling with my father was not his wife.”
Leo lowered his head, “You certainly made it appear she was; your grief looked genuine.” The woman shrugged. Leo looked out across the restaurant and after a few moments, said, “I suspect she was in with whoever set your father up.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, “She wasn’t my mother but she was considered a close part of my family. I did love her and she would never do anything to harm us.”
“Then how did the pirates find the ship?”
“What?”
“How did the pirates find the ship? I heard two of the crew talking in the crowd while everyone was being rounded up and they said they had not followed the normal course the liner used after its first stop to go to Kellinger; they took a completely different pattern of filaments. The only way for the pirates to find the liner was to have someone on board with a subspace digital transmitter who would activate it once it left for Kellinger. I feel reasonably certain that your father had his organization screen anyone traveling on that ship, at least I think he’d take no chances of someone being on board that would place his metal in danger. That means, it had to be someone he trusted who wouldn’t be scanned.” She stared at him in silence and then he said as he tilted his head, “I wondered why the pirate killed the woman he thought was your father’s wife first. You always save the one that’s closest to the target for last. Meaning no disrespect, your father has two daughters but only one wife. That tells me they knew she wasn’t his wife. It sort of confirms for me that even if your father was going to give them the code, John Blakely had orders to kill the woman traveling with your father.”
“Which would remove a possible witness to what was going on,” the young woman replied with a sigh.
Leo nodded, “I suspect if you examine the woman’s body before anyone can get to it, you’ll find the transmitter somewhere inside her along with a wireless activator in her purse or pocket.”
The woman lifted a communication device out of her purse and pressed a button. “I want Lyla’s body held.” She listened and said, “WHAT?!” She abruptly ended the call, “Her body was picked up before we exited the liner. Someone claiming to be a family member had the paperwork authorizing them to take her.”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“What you said makes sense but Lyla had no family. Whoever took her body was working for someone other than my father.” She thought for a moment and said, “My name is Anastacia Romanov. You can call me Ana. I’ve just seen a message on my communicator and the military forces have arrived to transfer the contents
of the safe to the Unity’s Treasury and need me to open the safe.”
“How dependable are the forces making the transfer?”
“They’re Round Table Guards.”
Leo’s eyes widened, “No one is going to try and take them on.”
Ana nodded, “The only place where the contents were in danger was out in open space while being transported to the Treasury here on Kellinger. They missed the opportunity to get it there.”
“By the way, what company is your father investing in?”
“A friend of my father has invented a means of teleportation.” Leo was stunned by her answer. “My father proved the process actually works and was given ninety-nine percent ownership if he could deliver eight trillion credits to the Unity’s Treasury here on Kellinger today. If this new technology existed yesterday, my father would still be alive. We’d have just teleported the Trillium from our planet to the Treasury here.”
“Now I see how the pirates were persuaded to do this.”
“How is that, Leo?”
“Piracy will be a thing of the past if no ships are carrying anything of value. If cargo can be teleported directly to its destination, pirates will be put out of business. It’s in their best interests to prevent this new technology from being developed.”
Ana sighed, “You’re right, who would need ships. Just step through a door to the planet you want to go to.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed, “That would end Pirates all together. I have a suggestion.”
“What is that?”
Leo told her and her eyes flew wide open. She picked up her communicator and before activating it, she asked, “Is Leo your real name?”
“My name is Leonidas Alexander Piper. You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”
“I’m willing to offer you ten percent of this new company along with the necessary funds to purchase whatever you need to capture Pirate John Blakely.”
“Capture?”
“Yes, I only require that I be there when you take him into custody.”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
“Leo, do you know what I’m offering you?”
“I do and it’s a good offer. But I lost my brother and you obviously have leaks in your organization that would cause huge problems I don’t want to deal with. Why would you pay this much, anyway?”
Ana stared at Leo and said, “Because Serge was not my father; he was my husband.”
Chapter Two
The large black vehicle drove up to the liner and parked under the baggage compartment. Three men lifted a casket out of the vehicle and carried it up the boarding ramp and disappeared into the Starliner. A few minutes later, four men appeared out of the baggage door under the ship carrying the casket. They slid it into the rear of the black vehicle and tied it down. The black vehicle pulled away and written on the back of it was Romanov Services.
While the body was being removed from the liner, an armored convoy was driving up to the liner and twenty armored soldiers jumped out of a massive vehicle, went up the ramp, and disappeared into the landing bay. Right behind them, Ana Romanov came down the ramp out of the Starliner and entered the landing bay under the huge ship wiping her face with a white cloth; it was clear she was weeping from the loss of her parents. A giant armored transport moved out of sight under the Starliner. There was activity under the baggage chute as a large box was taken out of the ship and put in the back of the giant armored transport. Ten minutes later, the twenty soldiers exited the landing bay and ran under the open armored shield into the rear of the giant vehicle as it moved out from under the Starliner. The shield was lowered and the six soldiers locked it securely in place. The huge vehicle’s engines roared to life and it moved out from under the Starliner inside a perimeter of ten other armored troop carriers gathered around the Starliner.
Every one of the hundred troops traveling with the convoy were carrying heavy shoulder blasters and were watching the surroundings of the convoy closely. The convoy pulled away from the liner and headed out of the space port toward the main highway, where the local authorities had blocked all traffic from using the super highway. Three armored hover ships were flying aerial coverage over the eleven vehicles in the convoy.
The Convoy made fast progress and almost made it to the Unity’s Treasury exit before it ran into trouble. A large moving transport that had been stopped in traffic on a side road waited until the convoy arrived at its location and ten men jumped out of the rear quickly and lifted shoulder missiles and took aim. The three armored floaters flying above the convoy were hit by three missiles each and exploded over the top of the convoy raining hot debris down on the ten armored vehicles. A tenth missile was fired at the armored troop transport directly in front of the giant vehicle carrying the armored box flipping it end over end as it went up in a massive explosion. The ten men calmly pulled another shoulder missile launcher out of the truck and fired at the other nine troop transports blowing them into flaming wreckage.
A giant warship came flashing down out of the sky and shot out the lasers on top of the massive armored transport as it moved directly over it and lowered a giant grappling claw. Six more warships came flashing in from over the horizon and began firing on the Proctor’s that were roaring in on armored air-assault jets. The Assault Jets were no match for the warships’ blasters and debris from them rained down on all sides of the major highway as they plummeted to earth. The giant vehicle was gripped by the claw and pulled up into the giant landing bay of the warship. Ten minutes later, all seven ships flew into the atmosphere at six times the speed of sound breaking glass in most of the buildings below their escape route.
The Planetary Defense Warships came flashing in off the filament but arrived ten minutes too late. They had been called out to investigate an attack on a Cruet Freighter in the outer planets. They arrived at the site of the distress call and found burning debris of a derelict transport. They were tricked into leaving the planet to investigate and the report of the attack at the planet came in as they arrived at the burning derelict. They were too far out from the filament to arrive before the attackers managed to get into under space and activate their stardrives.
• • •
The Pirates arrived at their base and John Blakely ordered the driver, rider, and all passengers in the armored transport killed. High powered lasers burned through the cab of the armored vehicle and the driver along with the rider were riddled with laser blasts. The doors to the landing bay were opened exposing the vehicle to the vacuum of space which would kill any survivors as it rushed through the hundreds of holes shot into the vehicle. It was only then that the landing bay was pressurized and the technicians began cutting through the armored shield on the rear of the smoking vehicle. Blakely sighed, Romanov’s two daughters and their baby probably died when the vacuum rushed into the transport. Oh well, he wasn’t going to endanger his men in an effort to save them.
The Pirate crew cut their way into the giant transport and Blakely was surprised the two daughters weren’t on the transport. The armored box was taken out of the compartment and placed on the deck. The locks were burned away and the box opened. John Blakely walked forward smiling and looked in the box. He looked at the pirates gathered around the box and started laughing. He doubled over and started slapping his leg. Inside the box was the body of Serge Romanov with a note pinned to his shirt saying that the Romanov Family was willing to buy back the body. They had pulled a switch on him and he was forced to admit that they were ingenious in how they had done it. The box had been measured with a mass scope from a distance and its weight matched what his source said it should have weighted. His source had told him the contents weren’t valuable and he should ignore the box but he had to destroy the convoy after his failure to get the code; he had quickly set up the ambush. He decided to retrieve the safe’s contents because a lot of effort had gone into protecting it. It appeared he had no way of knowing if his source was right about its value; the contents were gone. “C
ontact the Romanovs and set up a trade for the body.” His assistant nodded and Blakely lowered his eyes as he walked away. Someone had pulled a fast one. He intended to find out who did it.
• • •
Leo turned the black vehicle into the armored entrance of the Treasury and was stopped by two giant robots. “State your business!!”
Leo looked at the closest robot and said, “I am here to make a deposit for Romanov Industries.”
The Robot scanned the vehicle and said, “Move the vehicle inside the two main blast doors.” Leo nodded and moved the vehicle forward until it passed through two giant heavily armored crash doors. He stepped out and saw Ana standing beside a tall distinguished looking bald man. “It appears you were right about the convoy being attacked. Thank you for convincing me and my sister to not go with it and take other transportation.”
Leo tilted his head, “I could hear the blasts over at the main highway.”
Ana turned to the bald man, “Please check the contents and make sure they meet the agreed on value.”
The three men in the vehicle pulled the casket out and opened the lid. The Bald Man lifted a device and scanned the inside. “It appears you are three ounces above the agreed on price.”
Ana shrugged, “Serge wanted to make sure there was enough to meet the criteria in the event market prices fluctuated. Put the surplus into my account.”
Leo watched Ana handle the transactions and he could see she had done things like this many times before. She stood about five feet seven inches and her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was slightly overweight although her bust was small. Her brown eyes were bright and she talked…a lot. It was clear she was accustomed to having her way.
The bald man nodded and handed her an electronic clip board, “Please sign the spaces with an X next to them.” Ana signed and the man said, “The funds are now available to you for electronic transfer to the seller. The funds will be held for two days to give you time to insure what you are purchasing is what the former owner claims.”