by John Mierau
His head jerked up and down. “Just to help!”
Help yourself.
“I know. Let me help you, now.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You just said you’d have me shot!”
Ashlan grinned. “I’ll try. You can buy the best lawyer and try to stop me, too, but you have to get out of this room first.”
He ran back to the wall and snatched up his pistol. “Maybe I should kill you first!”
Ashlan tutted. “We’re your leverage, Joseph.”
He froze. “Like….like hostages?”
Something metallic rang through the door again.
Ashlan beckoned to him. “Yes, I will be your hostage, and we can walk out of this room together.” She pleaded with her eyes. “The door is opening, Joseph! Quickly, stand behind me. Put the gun to my head, and it will be alright, I’ll save you!”
The door shifted and groaned. Someone was trying to force it open from the outside.
Card walked closer, but stopped out of arm’s reach. “Don’t try to take my gun, and don’t try to run away from me!”
“You know I can’t. I wouldn’t even if I could, I promise.”
The door cracked open. “Admiral Daku!” someone called out.
Card’s left hand crossed over her neck. The still-warm muzzle of his pistol dug into her right temple.
Ashlan spun out of his grip, turning the pistol inwards. She kept her word, and didn’t run away. She faced him, and her fingers crept around his over the trigger. Card looked down at the gun hovering over his heart, and opened his mouth.
She fired into his chest before he could speak. He fell backwards. The override forced her legs to step forward, but she wouldn’t have run if she could.
She kept her word not to take his gun. His fingers snapped as she caged them in the trigger guard as he fell.
She kept her word not to run, and stayed with him as he fell, emptying the clip into his body.
She spat in his face and taunted him with her eyes as Joseph Card died.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
August 07 2351
In-Fold
Imminent arrival: The Trial System
The bolts of red and orange plasma whirled around the Fold.
The newly reconstituted council sat in their chairs, stone-faced and waiting.
Two new chairs surrounded a table again streaming with information. Lieutenant Colonel Carson and the newly commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Zheng, Commandant Kapoor’s lieutenants in the newly reconstituted Fleet Marine Brigade, sat between the Commandant and the Fleet Admiral.
“Soon,” Ashlan whispered to Noelle on her left, then turned a grateful gaze past her to Lee. “Thanks to you.”
The waiting game was just beginning. The Fold would eject them back into space at the halfway point between Earth and Reach: the Trial System.
The Fold trajectory had been designed by Frankie Olander herself to nullify the Taker Armada’s own Fold and send both Fleets tumbling into that lifeless solar system. If her plan succeeded, they would have a chance to stop the Takers.
Then, the real fun would start.
Frankie sat across the table, installed as the new head of Information Division. “Relax, it’s going to work!” she shouted, provoking nervous smiles around the table.
Lee waited. That’s what soldiers did most of the time, and that’s what he was. No longer a farmer, no longer a miner…a soldier.
“May this war be ended swiftly,” prayed Surgeon General Ellis Bay. “And may this one be the last.”
Noelle quirked her lips, knowing better, but holding her tongue.
Ashlan quirked her lips exactly the same but shared the truth that all warriors who lived long enough came to know. “We kill each other for riches, for dominion, for faith…sometimes for fun. The Takers are just one more war.”
“What the admiral is trying to say,” Colonel Kapoor explained to Dr. Bay, “is that there’s always another fight. It never ends.”
Kapoor nodded to Commodore Kagen, Admiral Daku, Carson and Zhang. “But we’re still fighting. We’re still here.”
Commodore Kagen rapped the table in fierce agreement. “And we’re not going anywhere.”
Then...they did.
The ships of the Fleet endured the wait.
Eventually and suddenly, the wait ended. The storm of colours ignited into a sphere of solid, brilliant white, and the Fold released them… into the arms of a new enemy.
The End
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Mierau is a professional storyteller living on the shores of Lake Ontario in the wilds of Canada. John writes about strong characters in intriguing situations: space opera, near-future thrillers, conspiracy tales, suspense stories and more. His serialized audio fiction podcast has been downloaded millions of times from iTunes.
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Chapter 1
Standing at the airlock door waiting for his ship to be boarded, Jack Kind fights the disorienting pull of memory. Twenty years old again, sheened in sweat, he wears nothing but a pair of piss-speckled tighty-whities. The barracks has already emptied. Stomping boots echo through the bulkhead. Screams rebound. When FROST soldiers burst into the room, he drops his weapon and dives to the floor with his hands on the back of his head.
“You alright?” Dino says.
Back to the present. This is his freighter. The war long over.
“Fine,” Jack says.
The airlock prep chamber is filled with equipment. Reinforced lockers house helmets and hardware. There’s a bench bolted to the center of the floor, a reminder that this is little more than a high-tech dressing room. Not the most glamorous place to die.
The proximity alert went off during dinner. A ship beelined toward them, small and armed with an illegal plasma cannon. Jack hailed but there was no response. He ordered the rest of the crew to the panic pod, but Dino stayed with him, so now they wait, while on the other side of this door unwelcome guests scrambling along their hull like insects seeking blood.
The way Dino’s standing, Jack can tell he’s ready for a brawl. Because at 6’6” with long tangled hair and the facial features of a caveman, Dino Vitale has never lost a fight.
Jack has. Plenty.
A mechanical whirring draws their attention behind them, to the far corner of the prep chamber where a defense turret takes aim. Jack frowns into the lens. He clicks the portable communicator dangling around his neck, a black cube about the size of his palm.
“Hunter,” he says. “I told you to stand down.”
Her voice buzzes through the speaker: “Just trying to cover our bases.”
“Don’t. We’re complying.”
“Well, shit.”
He can’t blame the crew for being upset. They’ve held to their delusions of dignity. The notion that there are lines which cannot be crossed. It’s a feeling he has come to resent.
Hunter says, “They’re opening the outer airlock.”
Jack wipes his hands on his jeans. “How many?”
“Five.”
“Armed?”
“Yes.”
He says to Dino, “Do not fucking move unless I say.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.”
“I realize that.”
They have faced their share of touchy situations. Close calls with law enforcement. The kind of people you throw money at until they let you on your way. Plus the occasional raiders with their clunky ships that can barely escape Earth’s gravity, but they always quit once they scan Bel and find the turrets.
This is different.
Hunter: “They
’re pressurizing. Fifteen seconds.”
For a moment, he wonders if he will throw his body to the floor in surrender.
The door zips open. Frigid air rushes in with that faint electric burning smell that lingers after a spacewalk. Bodies and movement. Men with rifles pointed. They wear blue formfitting suits, like soldiers wear, though these lack insignia. A leader breaks from the pack, comes forward shouting.
On reflex, Jack hikes his collar to hide the tattoo.
The leader jams his rifle into Jack’s gut and shouts, but the words are muffled inside his helmet. His face is small and red. He forces Jack into the corner next to a fire extinguisher, and for a moment, Jack is back at Camp Gertrude, awaiting a beating from the guards who would only leave once he was face down on the white concrete, frozen blood sealing him in place. Then the man in the spacesuit grabs his hair and yanks him upright, and Jack sees that he is not one of the guards he used to fear so badly. He is a goddamn pirate.
The man lets him go and steps back and opens his hands. An impatient gesture.
“I can’t hear you,” Jack says.
The man’s face screws up.
Jack screams, “I cannot hear you!” He taps his ear.
The guy lowers his rifle uncertainly, slaps at the clasps around his neck. Another pirate helps him. When the helmet comes off it reveals a head of sweaty black hair and Asiatic features. The guy is young. Mid 20s at the most. A pink scar runs from the left corner of his mouth to his ear where a patch of hair is missing, folds of thicker scar tissue there instead. When he speaks again, his broken English places him somewhere in Venus’s system. “Where is a cargos?”
Jack hitches his thumb toward the inner hallway.
*
As freighters go, Belinda is on the smaller side, but the cargo hold is still stadium-sized. Rows of grav suspension containers—26 of them, though she can hold up to 100 of the 40-footers—rest under a high ceiling of white strip lighting. Jack takes the pirates inside, wondering how they intend to load these massive crates aboard their vessel.
They ignore the cargo, fan out and walk the rows. Jack and Dino look on, helpless.
The leader circles back. He holds his helmet under his left arm, rests the rifle in the other, hip-level. “Where is a cargos?” he says.
“Not sure I follow,” Jack says. He gestures at the containers, but he’s got a terrible sinking feeling.
“Other cargos, Mr. Kind. Do not play game.”
Jack winces. There’s no sense in pretending.
He leads them to a blue crate with a black circle on its side, walks the perimeter and stoops to release the straps. “Stand back,” he says.
Hesitantly, the pirates obey.
He clicks his portable. “Belinda, target container 1187 for selective Zero-G.”
Nothing happens.
“Belinda, you there?”
Belinda has been glitchy for years, ever since he switched off her AI. According to Stetson, it’s something to do with encrypted files and fragmentation. You’re not supposed to tool around with such complex software, but Jack prefers things old-fashioned, with a human at the helm.
He tries again. “Belinda. This is Jack Kind. Target container 1187 for Zero-G.” Under his breath, he adds, “Please.”
“Yes, Jack.” Her voice comes monotone through his portable.
The air shudders.
Dino helps him heave the container from the floor. Even in microgravity, the thing is hard to lift. Something twinges in his back as he strains. The container rises, rotates slightly. It floats, suspended, about chest height in mid-air. They hold to the bottom handles and guide it a few feet down the aisle. Jack has to hang off the side to pull it back down. He asks Bel three times to reengage the gravity before she does.
There is a silver door in the floor where the container had been. At gunpoint, Jack lifts it open. It’s heavy and drops with a bang, revealing a darkened compartment with a ladder built into the side. The pirates hop down one at a time. Jack shoves his hands in his pockets, an attempt to stop their shaking. Hunter and the others will be watching from the turret above. The pirates already noted and dismissed it. They know he’s too smart—or maybe too stupid—to give the order. Make a run for it and hope Hunter has been practicing her aim. Hope there’s nobody watching from the attack ship.
No. He has caused enough death in his lifetime.
He hears the hiss of pressure releasing from the suspension crate down there. The pirates hoist up their take. Five rectangles, the largest ten-feet tall by seven-feet wide, each wrapped in white foam and delicate brown paper. Paintings. Art. Cultural artifacts. Stolen from the catacombs of cultures shattered by the war and reduced to contraband to be sold on the black market. He doesn’t know what the paintings are of or who they’re by or what they mean and he doesn’t give a shit. They equate to a great fuckload of money. That’s what matters. Because even if the pirates don’t execute Jack, there will now be a buyer on Earth who has paid for something that will not be delivered. And the seller—one of the most dangerous men in the solar system—will hold Jack responsible.
The pirates tear through the paper and padding and gape. Ooh. Ahh.
Satisfied, the leader says, “I think we will be go now.” He smiles. Big white teeth.
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