Tokushima blushed, but with a distinct pleasure at that. Sensing it, and all it implied, I too blushed, thankful for the mask of a sudden.
“Ahhh, yes, of course! Nothing but best!”
An impression was coming across then from the Buddha man. An older version of Herbivore. Hammerstein knew this gig like a well practiced drill. I was in awe.
“You know then where we may find such an aircar?” Tokushima asked coyly.
“Yes. I do.” He replied smugly. “And I shall be delighted to take you there immediately after your lunch!” He bowed.
Hammerstein showed his teeth in a forced smile.
“Thank you.”
Now hit the road ‘till we’re done eating.
It was a delicious lunch. Then Buddha was back, sporting a long brocaded coat and an effected casual saunter.
He gave a momentary pause and Hammerstein didn’t miss a beat, “Five percent?”
“Done.”
An open aircab drifted down and we all piled in. Buddha leaned over to the driver, “Herb.” was all he said and all that was needed to be said.
We were aloft, below us the boat filled canals and shops suddenly falling away, above us security fields glimmering transparent. The sky was abuzz with all manner of vehicles. I traced very few traffic control guide beams but there didn’t appear any urgency or concern from Buddha or the driver.
We careened about the city and then finally the was a large stone warehouse with numerous roof levels. Row of vehicles and servicemen and bots tending them gleamed in the sun. A wonderland of styles, aircars from all corners and ages of the galaxy.
My eyes widened beneath my mask, “Whoa…” I said stupidly and Tokushima chuckled a little at that.
We landed and Buddha took Mercury about the rooftop of a collection of aircars the like of which I had never imagined.
I began to wander when Tokushima took my hand, “SON!” she said, “Remember, Daddy is on business!”
She was so awesome, even when chiding me I took little notice of the chide. So were the aircars however, and I was getting my first taste of decadent luxuries in an exotic place. With a sporty female officer, and there was not even a peer on the planet with whom I could flaunt it.
There was, however, a serious matter of a kidnapped Princess-my Princess, and I sought to pull my delight over the delicious design excesses of centuries of artistry back into some manner of perspective relative to the scenario.
I managed.
Herb had arrived. Older. I synchronized the images Hammerstein’s memories had conveyed-Herb the mighty Navy officer, bane of star legions, with an ordinary appearing aircar salesman.
Herb leaned forward toward Hammer. They recognized each other’s jaw lines across the decades, even masked.
Soldiers forever.
“Hammer!”
“Herbivore.”
Herb chuckled, “Herbivore…yeah. Long time ago. I’m assuming you’ll need the best and all the special extras.”
“Of course.”
“The Altair. Comes with a droid. Seats seven. Can make escape velocity and will go a full parsec before you need to…refuel, dock, or die.”
“Prefer to dock than die.”
“Me too. You’ll want the Altair.”
“Done.”
“No haggling, you always did have a certain class. But it tells me you’re either rich as the Royals or working for them.”
“The latter. Yes, I’m here on official business. Let’s go inside.”
Herb signaled one of his men, “Get the Altair done up, it’s sold.”
We moved into the warehouse proper and I saw Herb’s collection was not limited to the aircars on the roof tops. There were star yachts, dog-fighters, freighters-on and on. The quantum echoes of all these vehicles slammed at me with their histories and I found myself dizzy from the impressions.
I tried to follow the conversations. Hammerstein was asking Herb about wormhole equipment. Had he sold any recently?
Herb was resigned, not out of fear, but out of some strange moral code he operated by. He and Hammerstein were of a kind, they shared an experience that made Hammerstein…unique. When he needed information, Herb would provide it.
“Don’t get much call for it. Not many that can handle wormholing. Mostly they try, and mostly they die. Takes a special breed to ride that storm. This group-they looked kind of tawdry. Wannabees. But they could pay, and who am I to keep a fool and his money together longer than the fates would conspire?”
Hammerstein held back a grim snort.
Herb continued, “I’d actually heard the name before-No-Deal DePaulo. Supposed to be a bit of a player at the Core. He didn’t look like much to me. Said he had a client, Imperial. Needed a wormhole capable frigate. We went over the equipment, he gave me the money, and he and the ship were gone before the suns set.”
“The Core? He’s a core smuggler?”
“Galactic core-Tangeonprioc to be specific. Hangs out at the Corewinds Tavern.”
“He told you that?”
Herb’s grizzled visage smiled, “He didn’t have to-he was wearing the T-shirt, “Corewinds Tavern. Best Damn Bar in Tangeonprioc.”
It occurred to me then our entire investigation could have run into a dead end at Langley Stay if it weren’t for a slime ball smuggler’s choice of bad sentimentality of attire one day. Yet there it was.
“And his ship…rather creepy name, “Mel’s monkey…nasty looking mutant monkey as the ship’s emblem. Has a bayonet in its mouth and ‘Central Galactic’ underneath as if there was any sort of civil authorities out there, which there aint.”
“Thanks Herb. The Altair, she ready?”
“She was ready before you left Caldris system, Buck. Don’t forget who you’re buying from-my hardware works.”
“Yeah, well, I got that. Almost took us out-they hit us with the wormhole.”
That brought a frown to Herb. “Sorry to hear that. You spank em?”
“Hard, but we got lucky.”
“You taking the kid and the lady on a payback run? To the Core? To Tangeonprioc?”
Hammerstein paused, I sensed he thought for a moment to explain, but didn’t see any good would come of it.
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
“Lot of Marauders in the core. Make sure that Altair is battened down good before you start shooting Marauders, aye Buck?”
“Will do, Herb. We’ll make sure the Altair is safe and sound before the firing starts.”
“Good. Good. Don’t want to see any scratches on her when you come back and tell me how the story plays out.”
“Herb, if I can fly that Altair back to this…warehouse, I’m going to make sure there’s not a scratch on it.”
So went our visit to Langley Stay at voids end where we acquired a particularly well appointed luxury aircar of classic make from the Pleiades. We had a suspect-the notorious No-deal-Depaulo, and a destination. Tangeonprioc. Sin city of the galactic core, smack dab in Marauder territory. Marauders, worse than the smugglers and the core syndicates, harbingers of a strange cult-rumored to be entirely mad and without ordinary human remorse, fear, or reason.
I was, however, distracted. One of the techs had brought up the Altair and it was one sweet ride.
TO BE CONTINUED...Pandoran Age Chronicles: No-deal DePaulo and the Core Pirates.”
They were waiting for us when we dropped out of hyperspace, it could sense them then, a dirty little swarm, and sickeningly the most frightening thing was they had once been human.
Klaxons hammered my ears and my empathic senses were then overwhelmed-the strange Marauders minds, with their ugly snake eye stares hammering my mind, then the sudden tussle of twenty hard core air men their adrenaline and training kicking in with a slam.
“This is not a drill!” Coco-butter Parsons howled but the air men’s boots were already banging steel, half of them at their guns.
We were sitting ducks and there were a dozen Marauder ships, easy. Particle
beam fire slashed away at our ship, the KanaaFutura. The Marauders doubtless had never seen a Caldris Royal Navy warship here at the Galactic Core, even through their snake infected minds I could sense a huge wave of surprise come back as we took their fire and the mighty KanaaFutura rose through the maelstrom of ionized particles and maligned atomic clouds her guns announcing payback.
Nobody missed and the Marauder shielding, magnetized ore layered over their giant ramjets, began to strip away in a fireworks show such that the demonic, snaky victimizers were revealed for the devil they were, squealing and riding fire with the hellish super-massive black hole and its light-years of swirling accretion disk as their background.
Still, no one stopped firing on either side and we rode the streams in a twirling death volley of destruction. Hammerstein, impossibly, was cursing and longing for a gun port…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dante D’Anthony was born in South Buffalo New York and grew up there and in the Chautauqua New York wine region. After graduating from SUNY College at Buffalo where he studied Design, he moved to Miami Florida where he worked in Architecture, Art Education, and Commercial Finance. He was in the US Army Reserves, MOS Dragon gunner, and was a Union High Temperature Insulator on power plants.
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The Princess of Caldris Page 7