Mercenary

by Dave Barsby

  “If you don’t help us, we will all die,” I say, immediately regretting it.

  Mrs Flavian sighs. “There should be fifty three thousand two hundred and twelve tabs in the cookie jar,” she tells us. “And that was a fucking pathetic attempt to invoke my sympathy, you weasely shit.”

  “I didn’t want to say it,” I confess, silently surprised at the cookie jar’s contents. Tima stands to collect the money, and nods a silent thanks. Mrs Flavian acknowledges, then returns her attention to me.

  “I am not doing this for my son,” she chides. “And I’m not doing it for you. I am doing it to help out a princess in need, because I can remember when people actually gave a fuck about royalty. No matter how like a whore they’re dressed.” Suddenly she calls sweetly to Tima: “While you’re up, love, make me a cup of tea. Thanks, dear.”

  A small price to pay for fifty grand.

  As we leave the house of sewer-mouthed Mrs Flavian, over fifty three thousand tabs stuffed into Tima’s pockets (the real stuff, not a datacard), my ill feeling has eased somewhat. Normally it would have taken me months to get over the traumas I have recently suffered, but I can already feel a freshness bouncing back into my mind. Is this what has become of me? Am I losing my moral code and becoming…one of them? A genuine mercenary? Next thing I know, I’ll be handling a gun. As it happens, it is a pity I’m not holding one right now.

  We are just four hundred yards down the road when a trio of jet black hovercars whine to an abrupt halt opposite us. Tima is immediately suspicious, I am curious, Larisa just presumes it is how common folk drive.

  Some men exit the car. I immediately know they are of the unsavoury sort. Nice people don’t dress all in black, wear sunglasses and glance around shiftily with one hand inside their long coats. There is a woman too, wearing a shiny black catsuit and holding a snub-nosed laser pistol – another case of definitely evil by dress code alone, never mind the gun. By now, Tima has moved on to high alert, I have shifted smoothly into abject panic, while Larisa is starting to suspect something may be wrong.

  “Get ready to run,” Tima tells us, moving in front to protect us non-combative types.

  I can spot the leader of this gang of heavy-set thugs as soon as he appears because he smiles insincerely at us. We are surrounded – armed and dangerous men (and woman) on three sides, a rather thick hedge to the rear. Whoever this man is, he knows he is in control. In fact he is so much in control, he feels confident enough to remove his sunglasses.

  He is a thin man, around six foot two, slicked back brown hair, with a set of gleaming teeth and a twinkle in his eyes that nicely offsets the rather large scar running down his left cheek.

  “What is this?” Larisa asks, not yet realising we are in mortal danger.

  “Stay quiet,” I whisper out the side of my mouth.

  The man stands proudly ten feet from our position and clasps his hands behind his back. “Good day, ladies and…” He studies me with curiosity. “…gender neutral.”

  Anger burns inside me. Being held at gunpoint is one thing, but why can’t people figure out what gender I am? I think it is obvious, don’t you, dear reader?

  “Who are you?” I ask through gritted teeth.

  The man doesn’t answer. “Where is he?” he says instead.

  “Who?” Tima answers, stalling, while I am still working out who ‘he’ is.

  “Where is he?” the man repeats, and as he does so the evil, shiny woman points her laser pistol in our direction.

  “We…we…” Larisa stutters. In panic I squash her and myself into the hedge, stupidly hoping it may allow us safe passage through it. The scene is absurd within the confines of the tranquil setting; sun glowing lazily, birds singing with passion, a faint, sweet breeze amid the rustling treetops.

  “That Senator told us you’d be coming here, so don’t play games,” the man says.

  “Oh, but I so do like a good game,” Tima says. “I think we’ll need some more clues to go on.”

  She doesn’t receive a further clue. She receives a laser blast in the gut.

  Tima crumples without a sound. The smell of crisped flesh wafts up my nostrils. All else is a blur. I am vaguely aware of the gun training on me.

  “Where is Rogdo Flavian?” the man insists.

  Larisa is too shocked to speak, I can do little but whimper. This information is not yet ready to be processed. Tima can’t have been shot. Not here, not in this setting, not this way.

  The man waits a few seconds, analysing us. He realises his strong-arm tactics have backfired and turned the two remaining prisoners into jelly. He knows, thank God, that he will get no more information out of us for a while.

  He points one finger at Larisa. “She looks like she belongs to him. Bring her.”

  I understand the words. I’m sure Larisa does too. But we are still unable to react. It is not until a goon reaches us that Larisa’s thoughts return to the present danger. She poses defiantly.

  “Don’t give me any trouble, lady,” the goon tells her, striking a fighting stance. “I know karate, jujitsu and kickboxing.”

  To show he is sincere, the goon swings a fist at Larisa’s head. She effortlessly avoids it, performing a perfect on-the-spot back-flip. Her boot heel connects solidly with the underside of the goon’s chin. He stares at her for a moment, his eyes glazing over.

  “I know gymnastics,” she informs him. The goon crumples.

  Larisa has just enough time to smile proudly at her own cleverness before another three goons jump on top of her. Her struggles are valiant but in vain. The men are far too strong for her, and all she manages to do is thrash about without form or meaning. She screams for help, triggering me from my catatonic state. However, it doesn’t really matter, because at that moment I am unceremoniously clubbed on the back of the head.

  I fall to my knees, a dull ache seizing my brain and a growing roar in my ears. Next to me, Tima is rolling her eyes, her hands twitch and a thin trickle of blood escapes her mouth.

  The man kneels before me. I glance past him to see Larisa being bundled into a back seat. The man takes my chin, drawing my focus to him.

  “Tell your boss,” he says, “that if he wants to see his girlfriend alive again, to be at the place where he destroyed Westcott in fourteen days.”

  “Wha…?” is all I mumble.

  The man is not about to repeat himself. He stands, walks back to a car and gets in. As fast as a mist cleared by a turbine, the black-clad goons melt into the other cars. With barely a whisper, they scythe down the clean, tranquil road and away.

  “Wha…?” I mumble again.

  I look down at Tima. She isn’t doing too well. There is a large blackened hole piercing her stomach. I pick her head up and lay it in my lap. Her face shows an expression I have never seen before. All the confidence has gone, all the courage. She is a little, lost girl.

  “You going to be okay?” I ask.

  She coughs up some dark, gloopy blood, then groans. She grasps me by my T-shirt and balls it into a fist. She whispers, terrified, but her voice is too low. I lean in closer, hoping to hear her. Her grip on my T-shirt fails, so instead I take her hand in mine and squeeze.

  “…don’t let me…” she whispers with a tremor.

  But her voice fades until one final breath escapes her lips.

  “Westcott,” Rogdo mutters. “Shit! Never thought I’d hear from him again.”

  “What are we going to do, Captain?” Dirk asks. “What’s the plan?”

  “I for one don’t give a rat’s ass about the Princess,” Drift pipes up. “But those bastards killed Tima. I say we wipe them out.”

  “Who is Westcott?” I ask. “What’s all this about?”

  Rogdo sits, but he is too restless and returns to pacing. It is six hours since the event that has ripped the heart out of this crew, two hours since they found me by the roadside, still clinging to Tima’s cooling, stiffening body. If there was anyone I could genuinely feel affection for out of this crew, i
t was her. She was the only one who seemed to embrace me as part of this crew, the only one who ever showed a glimmer of moral redemption. The only one whom I did not expect to die an early, violent death.

  “Westcott,” Rogdo says, mostly to himself. “Robert James Westcott. Son of a bitch.”

  “Aside from that?” I ask. I am being left out of the loop again. It seems the rest of the crew know who Westcott is, or at least a little about him. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I have taken this event personally, and I have fully embraced the role of the mercenary – I want revenge. No more complaints, no more standing on the moral high ground arguing for the side of virtue, honour and a law-abiding life. I am with Drift on this one: I want to wipe them all out.

  Rogdo sighs. “Maybe you’d be best not knowing any of this.”

  “Too late for that,” I tell him. “Give me a gun and I will kill him. But don’t cut me out.”

  “It’s true,” Hiaelia says. “Much as I hate to admit it, we’re all, all of us in this one. Captain, crew, journalist. Shit, even the bed bugs want a bite of the action. They killed Tima, Rogdo. We all feel it.”

  “And the Princess,” he says. “They’ve got the Princess. Let’s not forget that. Getting her back is our top priority.”

  “Your top priority,” Drift tells him.

  “Whatever. The end result will be the same either way.”

  “Back to Westcott?” I say. “Just give me the brief overview so I know what we’re up against.”

  “You heard of a planet called Narkis?” he asks.

  It rings a bell in my head, and I quickly scan my memory implant. “You mentioned it when we first met,” I tell him. “Something about kidnapping an import minister.” Rogdo merely stares at me. “Called Westcott,” I realise.

  “Eight years ago.”

  “What happened? That man said you destroyed Westcott.”

  “That man is Westcott. And I didn’t destroy him. It wasn’t just a standard kidnap and ransom deal, I kidnapped him on behalf of another client. Narkis was undergoing some civil troubles at the time. My clients wanted him.”

  “An import minister? Why?”

  “There were rumours of large shipments of foreign weaponry being shuttled in. Other top secret stuff too. They wanted to know what, where and when. So, I delivered him to them.”

  “And then?”

  Rogdo shrugs. “And then I left. I heard more rumours, rumours about what they did to him to extract the information. Problem is, he was the then-President’s brother-in-law. The President issued an order for me to be killed on sight for my part in it all, and that order has never been repealed by the new government.”

  “Did they break him?”

  “Westcott? Yeah. He told them everything he knew, stuff they hadn’t even the faintest idea about. It brought the government down, ruined his career. I guess that’s why he’s pissed off. But I think blaming me for it all is a bit much.”

  “Still,” Drift says, “we won’t hold that against him when we blow his brains out.”

  “That’s it?” I ask. “That’s all you did? You blew up half a continent on Almudena, and no one’s complained about that yet!”

  “The planet is called Narkis,” Rogdo points out. “Ever heard of the expression ‘being narked off’?”

  “No,” I tell him. It must be a local colloquialism. “Just one more thing: if this happened eight years ago, why is he taking revenge now?”

  “He doesn’t have the resources Vitari had. It takes a lot of money and power to track me across the galaxy. I guess he just lay in wait, hoping that one day I’d visit my mother.”

  “I think at some point Vitari tipped him off that we’d be here,” I say. “We fell right into his trap.”

  “And what about now?” Bolland asks. “Will we stumble blindly into his second trap? It is evident he wants to kill you, Captain. He may not have many resources at his disposal, but we will be outmanned, outgunned and outmanoeuvred on his home turf.”

  “That is why we need something extra special this time,” Rogdo answers. “Something he won’t expect.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” the scientist continues. “I say we call his bluff. Whatever happens, once the deadline is up he will be off-guard, thinking we’ve failed to keep our appointment. We can attack then.”

  “Call his bluff? And what if it isn’t a bluff? What about Larisa?”

  “Well…is it worth risking everyone’s life just to save her?”

  “Yes,” Rogdo answers. “Ten times over, yes.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Drift mutters. “Captain, please tell me you haven’t.”

  Rogdo remains silent. Are they saying what I think they’re saying? Could the sadistic space rogue have fallen for the woman he once wanted to flush out of an airlock? I think about this for a moment, and realise it is possibly the most sensible, normal thing to have come out of this whole trip. Self-aware bombs, talking turtles, a sound stage on wheels and a bar where you get sued sound like complete madness when put next to the age-old saying ‘opposites attract’.

  “Do you love her?” I ask.

  “Shut up!” Rogdo shouts in disgust. Yes, I think, he does. Stage 1: Denial.

  “If we’re not going to call his bluff,” Hiaelia says, “and we are evidently not going to charge in there blindly, what are we going to do?”

  “I have an idea,” Rogdo answers. “But it’s going to take a lot of work.”

  “And the idea is?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Drift, we need to visit a large orbital ring or supply depot and get to Narkis a day early.”

  “Not with this engine, we won’t.”

  “Right. We need a new engine, we need weapons, and Bolland…you need a lab.”

  “Lab?” Bolland asks excitedly. His age jumps forward twenty years in a flash.

  “Calm down,” Rogdo tells him. “I need you in perfect health. Don’t worry, everyone has their bit to do.” He turns to me. “You’re up first.”

  “What do I have to do?” I ask, getting excited myself. The crew all seem fired up now there might actually be a chance of exacting their revenge, and of having something to occupy their minds.

  “The fifty three thousand Tima had isn’t going to buy us shit. Do you remember where my mother got that money from?”

  “Cookie jar,” I tell him. I stand. “I think that was it, though. No more dough, so to speak.”

  “No, that’s good. My mother always had an odd habit of keeping exactly five percent of her money in the cookie jar for emergencies. The rest will be under her mattress. We need it.”

  “I need to ask your mum for more money?” I say, my heart sinking.

  Rogdo nods. “All of it.”

  19. NARKIS

  Being unfamiliar with the planet, I look Narkis up on the galactanet. There are 3.2 million entries, a fairly small number of pages by all accounts, and most of them are less than useless when it comes to information gathering. However, I do manage to discover a few minor details:

  The northern hemisphere is covered with lush vegetation interspersed with most of the planet’s major cities, while the southern hemisphere is a scorched earth where tumbleweed freely roam over dust bowls and through jagged canyons. In fact, Narkis was the place where we first discovered tumbleweed was a living entity, and not just a random collection of twigs as first presumed.

  Narkis is also famous for two other reasons. Actually, that should be infamous. Narkis was where the phenomenally unsuccessful Chat-Biro was designed, made and shipped out to unsuspecting planets across the galaxy. If you are too young to recall the Chat-Biro, it was a high-pitched talking pen that never shut up. The marketing and advertising campaign (slogan: “I think, therefore I pen”) emphasised its ability to point out spelling and grammatical errors, and also to suggest better ways to construct sentences. Unfortunately for the marketing men, this was the pen’s major flaw – by the time it made its suggestions, you had already written the incorrect spelling / poorly-co
nstructed sentence. Initially this led to a massive six million percent boom in the sales of Tippex, but the public quickly realised that sticking with computer technology was preferable and the Chat-Biro was consigned to the bin of history.

  The planet’s economy was crippled by this, and unemployment was rife. When the planet had finally recovered from this recession, its inhabitants were unused to business management. High-level recruitment consultants were drafted in from other planets, but this brought with it its own problem. The recruitment consultants posted record profits and, as with all bandwagons, everyone jumped on. Soon, aside from a few high-level government positions, the only jobs available were in the recruitment consultant business, and the only way the businesses stayed afloat was by helping other recruitment consultants recruit consultants. Such was the need for fresh blood that a system of rapid turnover was employed and the average job lasted just three months before another firm beckoned. With no possibility of redundancy, pension, annual bonus or long-term mortgage plans, the civilisation soon crashed into another devastating recession. It was shortly after this that a minor civil war began, which ended abruptly when import minister Robert James Westcott divulged the government’s entire catalogue of classified information to the enemy.

  Two days out, our first rendezvous is with an orbital ring, a gleaming silver doughnut adrift in deep space. Feeling there is a chance I could be building to an exciting climax for my novel, I have regained my inquisitive spirit and latch on to Rogdo for the duration of our stay.

  While he has sent Hiaelia and Drift off to locate suitable weaponry, our first stop is a ship junker.

  “Hey, hey, hey, welcome to Auto-Junk,” the small, green owner tells us in a gravely voice. “Your number one stop for automatic spare parts. Whatever you want, we’ve got – ship engines, computer processors, hovercar stabilisers-”