Balance of Terror

by K S Augustin

  He was thinner than when she last saw him, but his face still bore that usual, serene expression. She had noticed him limp as he followed Lazt into the room and there was a slim walking-stick in his right hand. But, other than that, he still appeared to be her Srin, with his craggy features, broad shoulders and warm grey eyes.

  Satisfied, she relaxed and tuned in to what Lazt was saying.

  “...initial duties will be with the first-year students, revising what they’ve been taught and bringing them up to speed with expectations at this institute. Considering that we are now accepting students from other systems, I’m sure you all understand how important this task is.

  “Because we’re almost at the end of the semester, I’ve told Dr. Lanix that he can shadow several of you on your remaining classes, with a view to beginning his own course in two months’ time. I hope you will all welcome him to the department.”

  There was a smattering of applause and a few of Moon’s colleagues moved forward to greet Srin personally. Maybe she should have appeared more excited, but Moon was content to remain seated at the back of the room, a small smile playing about her lips. Every now and then, through the gap of people, Srin would look at her and their gazes would lock, until his attention was pulled away by another welcoming staff member.

  It took almost twenty minutes, after some half-steps in her direction and a few strategic half-turns, before he finally made his way to where she sat.

  “Hello,” he greeted, holding out his hand. “My name is Seedin Lanix. “

  She smiled and stretched out her own hand. “Moahn Skylark.”

  He tilted his head and smiled at her, a quizzical expression on his face. “I know this sounds strange, Dr. Skylark but, somehow, I get the feeling I should know you.”

  “That is strange,” she replied, “but I feel the same way.”

  He looked abashed and waved her words away. “Well, I hope you didn’t go through what I recently went through.”

  The meeting looked like it had broken up, straggling staff members giving farewell waves before sauntering out the door. Moon waited for a few minutes then gestured for Srin to follow her into the now-empty corridor and down the steps.

  “And what did you go through?” she asked, as they headed outside.

  “I was told I was in a fusion accident while on my way to Credis.”

  They stepped out into the gardens at the front of the institute and Moon breathed in the crisp winter air. Soon it would be spring, a season of new beginnings. Had the timing of Srin’s arrival been part of Kad’s plans as well?

  “I almost died and had to undergo emergency gene therapy.”

  He looked around at the trees and sky as if he had never seen anything like them before.

  “Unfortunately, that resulted in some side-effects.” He indicated his walking stick with a wry smile. “Like this. It seemed the least obtrusive way to keep me upright.”

  With his free hand, he tapped his temple. “And a few pathways here have burnt out.”

  She smiled broadly at him. “Well you look just fine to me, Dr. Lanix.”

  “I wanted to give you all the bad news up front,” he said.

  Her gaze flickered. “All the bad news?”

  “I believe in full disclosure…just before I ask a beautiful woman out for dinner.” He smiled and it transformed his face, lighting his eyes with boyish enthusiasm.

  How could she resist it when she’d never resisted it before?

  “You might say I’m pushing things too far, too fast, Dr. Skylark, but – having gone through a near-death experience that came this close,” he held thumb and finger barely apart, “to being terminal – I’ve come to the conclusion that life should be lived to the fullest.” He paused. “I hope that I haven’t offended you.”

  “Not at all,” she assured him. “I, too, believe that one should grasp the opportunities one is presented with.”

  “Exactly.” He looked pleased with himself. “So, and, as I said, I know this is very forward of me, but would you do me the honour of having dinner with me sometime, Dr. Skylark?”

  Moon smiled and took his hand. “I would be delighted, Dr. Lanix.”

  The trees were bare in the dry winter air, their naked branches reaching for the sky, but the couple were oblivious to the scenery and to the wind that tugged at their clothes like an errant child. Lost in each other’s gazes, they drew closer. Their lips met….

  Letter from the author

  One of my editors said that readers would be very upset to find a prologue at the end of the book. “They might misunderstand,” he said, “and think there’s another part to the story yet to come.” Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of it like that. While the last chapter concludes Moon’s and Srin’s story for now, I personally thought it would be a nice touch to label it as a “prologue” (rather than epilogue) because, while it’s an ending for you, it is yet another beginning for them. However, knowing what they’ve already been through, I hope there is as little doubt in your mind as there is in mine that both of them will – once again – find true love together.

  Or, to put it more simply, that’s all Kaz wrote in the Moon and Srin story. Having said that, you never know how things can go in the Republic. There may be an advance scouting mission, attempting to use Credis as a distraction from more domestic problems. Another conglomeration might be wanting to take over and somehow sees Credis as a strategic planet in their planning. If any of that happens, I’ll be sure to update you on our favourite physicists.

  If you haven’t read any of my previous books, and you liked the character of Quinten Tamlan, please feel free to try QUINTEN’S STORY. I’ll put the first chapter after this letter so you can get a feel for that tale. I’ve already been asked for a sequel to QUINTEN’S STORY, and that’s slated for 2013 sometime. Fingers crossed.

  I’ve discovered that I like writing letters and, left to my own devices, I could prattle on quite happily for several more pages. However, I still have the last three books of the CHECK YOUR LUCK series to finish, and a cyberpunk novella to edit so, with reluctance, I’ll leave you here and wish you all the best in your future reading.

  With regards and appreciation,

  Kaz Augustin

  Johor, Malaysia

  QUINTEN’S STORY

  Chapter One

  The call was waiting for Quinten in the morning, bounced off his carefully constructed piggyback network of commercial feed points, scientific arrays and even – like a tongue childishly stuck out at the Republic – some military outposts. He might be described by most people as grim but, underneath the scar tissue, Quinten had a sense of humour. And it made him twist his lips in cynical amusement when he read the entire message, pieced together by the bitcrypt spiders while he slept.

  “So the pirate kids want to meet.”

  He wondered what they wanted. His last trade with the Neon Red cartel had been more than a year ago. He found them a skittish lot in general, too nervous to deal with goods of any real value, and ill-suited to the lifestyle of freewheeling racketeers. At times, he felt that the purchases he made from them amounted to little more than charity, a way of hurling some tiny needles to occasionally prick the Republic’s tough hide.

  “And maybe that’s enough,” he muttered, knowing that – at one time – it hadn’t been. Knowing that, when he was young and idealistic, the only goal he had in mind was the complete subjugation of the Republic. But that had been years ago, and that idealist was now gone, leaving behind the shell of a man who had long ago outlived his usefulness and was now reduced to consorting with pirates.

  He commanded the ship to prepare the return message, indicating a rendezvous near Port Tertiary in six hours’ time. That would barely give the Perdition time to get there but, if it was going to be a rush for him, then hopefully it lessened the chances of the Republic staging an ambush. And if the cartel couldn’t make it in time…well, he wasn’t in this for the popularity. Quite the opposite.

  With the order
received and in processing, there was nothing left to do until the ship entered normal space near the rendezvous point. Quinten looked around the cockpit of his pride and joy. The command centre had been originally created with many more staff in mind – eight, to be exact. In the five years since he’d acquired the Perdition, he’d made extensive modifications to the original battle-scout design. He installed expensive, black-market AIs, paid handsomely for a string of labour-saving modifications, and incorporated the latest in shielding and sensor technologies. It might still resemble a Republic ship from the outside, but the Perdition’s innards were pure Quinten Tamlan.

  Although officially classed as a “light combat scout”, the ship was almost one hundred metres long, a knobbly, clumsy-looking vessel that effortlessly cleaved through the vacuum of deep space and dished out death with ease. Its primary cockpit was just forward of centre, up near the skin, beneath a bump that housed three transparent panels but was normally obscured with metal shielding. A secondary cockpit was situated in the rear, buried deep to minimise the chance of sensor feeds getting cut during an attack.

  Other, more bulbous protuberances marred the ship’s surface. They previously contained the accommodation quarters, ship’s canteen, and two cargo bays. Quinten converted those areas to hydroponics, general storage and used one cargo bay to receive the rare, and only ever invited, guest.

  As part of his renovations, he had cut through bulkheads, forming two long thoroughfares from the tip of the scout to its stern. The resultant arrow-straight corridor was easier for his crippled body to navigate. He knew it would also enable enemies to quickly barrel through the ship, but if that ever happened, he was in no physical shape to give them much competition. If the Space Fleet, or an ambitious cartel with delusions of grandeur, was ever in a position to set an armoured foot on the Perdition, then the game was over, and he was probably already dead.

  Restless, knowing the time had come for him to exercise, Quinten muttered a quick curse and rose slowly to his feet. Some days were better than others, but this wasn’t one of them. He thought he heard his body creak as, aching and already weary, he willed it to move to the back of the cockpit and descend heavily to theship’s main corridor. There was experimental surgery available that – for an astronomical sum – could give him a cyborg body, but the procedure was risky. From time to time, Quinten would re-examine the option, stare at the analysis that concluded an eighty per cent fatality rate, then flick the screen off. He wondered why he still cared about staying alive, but couldn’t come up with a reason that made sense.

  The rumble beneath his feet changed tempo as the ship executed his commands, heading for a hyperspace crease he knew was only a light-second away. The tenor of the vibrations told him that they were accelerating, the shudders became a jolt, then the jolt disappeared and an unnatural smoothness took its place. The Perdition was now in hyperspace. It would take more than five hours, and four jumps, to make it to Port Tertiary. The journey would entail a litany of trembles, judders and the absence of movement completely, leaving him with little to do except trust the navigator to do its job while he worked his body into some semblance of suppleness.

  His limbs were stiff, as they were most mornings, and he limped badly. Part of one cargo bay had been turned into an exercise area, and he had deliberately chosen the one closest to the stern so he would need to walk some distance to get there.

  It took him almost five minutes to walk the forty-metre distance and enter the gym, but he tried to keep the bitterness out of his thoughts. It could be worse. He could be floating in a bowl somewhere, condemned to a half-life peering at the universe through a mist of pastel rejuv-gel. He could be on Bliss, the Republic’s hell-hole prison planet, knowing he would never be allowed to leave. Or he could be dead. All those options made the agony of fifty sit-ups insignificant. With gritted teeth, Quinten disrobed, sliding his gaze past the one mirror in the room, and began his regime.

  He worked out for an hour, and was shaking and sweating profusely by the end of it. It took effort to lift his body from the exercise chair, and the steps to his quarters were truncated and staggering. He knew he could fall – had had done so several times in the past – but he refused to give in to his body’s frailties. Not yet. If he couldn’t exercise a small degree of self-discipline on his own body, then it was no use being alive.

  He turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it, letting the steamy heat massage his aching muscles and wash away the stink of his sweat while he supported himself against the slick wall. The water streamed over a bare chest, criss-crossed with surgery scars, a pale shadow of the muscled bulk he used to carry with pride. His arms, once bulging, were withered remnants, his legs – well, to call them maimed would have been a compliment. The only things that remained in perfect working order were his mind and his damned libido.

  His mind, to force his body to do his bidding, and his libido, to remind him of all he had lost.

  He remembered an ancient joke. If you lie on your hand for a while, it’ll get numb and feel like somebody else’s. Even without that temporary anaesthesia, the fingers that touched his scarred body – on the rare occasions when he gave in to the itch – didn’t feel like his. Nerves at his extremities had been destroyed in the explosion that had almost killed him, and it was more a robot limb that enfolded him and brought him to unsatisfying relief. But who else would have him? An attractive woman, of her own volition? He grinned savagely as he laboriously dried himself. They would run parsecs in the opposite direction the moment they saw his unadorned form. He could pay for sex – he appreciated the no-strings aspect of a commercial transaction – but could never be sure that while the women sold one part of their anatomy to him, they weren’t using another part to betray him to the Republic. That only left his hand, thin yet loyal.

  Moving to his wardrobe, he asked the ship for a progress report. Still three hours to go. He used the time to make sure that the Perdition was in full fighting trim. He primed the sensors to operate to their maximum limit, much further out than that of normal commercial craft, and even a bit farther than most run-of-the mill Republic battle craft. Or, rather, he tried to prime the sensors, and met with only sparse screens, bereft of their usual crowded detail. That indicated another problem, too worryingly close to the last. The solution would be something easy, he had captained the ship for long enough to get an intuition for that kind of thing, but such a lapse could easily spell danger.

  The blare of an intercepted transmission cut through the silence.

  “—sweep along the sector. Reports are negative.”

  Quinten swore and switched to his secondary sensors. They were good but not as sensitive as his primary array. He hoped that would be enough.

  “Affirmative, Steel Dot Two.” There was an echo shadowing the words, indicating that the answering ship was farther away. “Continue sweep in this direction and rendezvous back at Steel Major in thirty-two hours. Steel Major out.”

  The secondary array showed no signs of a nearby vessel. Was Steel Dot Two ahead, or behind, him? He wished he knew. Knowing he was taking a risk, Quinten shaped all sensors into a narrow conic and aimed it straight ahead, directing the Perdition to plot an even greater parabolic path around the sector and increase speed. That, at least, the ship could do.

  He settled back in his chair and frowned, waiting until the next crease was within range and the ship could complete its jump to hyperspace.

  The sensors weren’t the only problem he had. Only two weeks ago, the missile bay doors had jammed shut. Thankfully, the failure hadn’t happened during an actual emergency, only in one of the monthly simulations, but it had still taken him more than a week to laboriously hunt down the problem – an overloaded secondary relay – and only thirty minutes to correct it. Now this. His body wouldn’t thank him for putting it through its paces again, so soon after the last bout of bending and crawling, but there was no alternative.

  The problem was that the Perdition was too big fo
r one person to maintain for any length of time. He had known that when the opportunity arose to capture a battle scout almost whole, more than four and a half years ago, and had still talked himself into claiming it as his own. He had worked hard to get it spaceworthy and modified to his exacting requirements, but the time for continued delusion was gone. If he wanted to continue travelling the galaxy, while staying out of the Republic’s ever-alert gaze, he was going to have to either take on crew or...get rid of the ship.

  Neither option was attractive. New crewmembers could betray him as easily as making a stealth comm call. And, after getting the Perdition in exactly the kind of shape he wanted, he was loathe to part with it. It would take almost as much time removing all traces of his modifications as it did installing them. And the thought of trashing such expensive, hard-won equipment was one he couldn’t even begin to contemplate.

  He ran another diagnostic on the primary sensors and stared at the uninformative screen and large number of warnings it displayed, blinking at him in silent accusation. The front and rear sensors seemed to be operational, with standby power below their maximum, but the side, top and bottom arrays appeared totally out of commission. He was hoping that the readings were false. Maybe everything would snap back into peak efficiency once he jumped in and out of hyperspace and had time to properly calibrate them.

  Yeah, and the Neon Red cartel might actually have something worth selling for a change.

  One hour out from Port Tertiary, the Steel Dot sweep team sectors behind him, Quinten started getting ready. He walked the corridors of the Perdition unencumbered when he was by himself but, for guests, he made sure he looked as formidable as possible. And that meant getting into an exoskeleton suit that, five years ago, had cost him the exorbitant figure of two and a half kilo-credits.

  Once in his quarters, Quinten took the suit off its custom-made frame and stepped into it, pushing his arms through the loose sleeves and fastening the front at three points.