The Star Cross

by Raymond L. Weil

  Ignoring Stroud, Mayfield gazed at his Cabinet members, most of whom he had known for years. “In a few weeks I will fully brief the Cabinet.”

  -

  Stroud sat down, not pleased with all he had heard. There had to be some way he could get his people on one of those evacuating ships. He had promised his wife that the two of them would shortly go to Newton, where he would have a very big say in the governing of the colony. They had already packed up many of their more expensive belongings and chosen several servants to accompany them.

  -

  Two days later Fleet Admiral Tomalson, as well as Secretary of Defense General Braid, met Admiral Vickers aboard a large cargo ship docked at Earth’s shipyard. Four heavily armed Marines guarded the hatch they were approaching.

  “What’s the firepower for?” asked Kurt, as the Marines allowed them to enter. He wondered what could be so valuable on this cargo ship to require such extreme measures. He had also passed another full squad of Marines in the outside corridor of the shipyard.

  “We finished interrogating our prisoners,” replied Tomalson, gesturing for Kurt to follow him and the general. “Most refused to talk, but a few, with the right encouragement, gave up a lot of information.”

  “So what are we up against?” They had stopped at another locked hatch.

  “It’s bad,” answered General Braid, shaking his head. “The name Profiteers means exactly as it sounds. This particular race, who attacked us, is from the planet Marsten in the Golite System. For a lack of a better word, it serves as the capital for this Gothan Empire of Profiteers.”

  Tomalson nodded. “One of our captives believes that their High Profiteer will return to either Marsten or Kubitz and hire a group of mercenaries to destroy our fleet,” Tomalson said. “From what we’ve been able to gather from our interrogations, some Profiteers become mercenaries and hire themselves out to the highest bidder or, in our case, for a very lucrative payment.”

  “A payment that will be made in gold, platinum, and jewels primarily,” added General Braid, as he keyed in a code on a door pad. Several locks could be heard disengaging, and the hatch swung open.

  All three of the men stepped inside, and Kurt froze as he looked around in amazement. “You have got to be kidding me.” The room was full of pallets of gold bars all secured to the floor. Kurt walked over to the nearest stack and gazed in awe at the wealth it represented. “Where … ?” He stepped closer and touched one of the bars. He let out a deep breath; this was the stuff that dreams were made of. “Why?” he asked, turning around to face the two older officers.

  “When you return to Newton, you will have a new mission,” explained Tomalson. “From what our prisoners have told us, almost anything anyone may want is available for sale on the planet Kubitz. It has a massive interplanetary black market and the largest slave market in our section of the galaxy.”

  “The people who were taken from Earth,” Kurt began, as his mind worked, “could they be there?”

  “Probably,” General Braid answered. “From what our prisoners said, the captives will be trained for three or four months on the planet Kubitz to increase their worth in the slave auction. They will be sold there—to people and representatives from planets near and far—as household servants, general laborers, and even to brothels.”

  “You’re going to Kubitz with the Star Cross and buy our people back,” Tomalson said.

  “That won’t be easy to accomplish,” Kurt said, his eyes narrowing. “We don’t speak their language, understand their culture, have knowledge of the planet … Hard to plan for our safety and the captives’ protection with such disadvantages.”

  “We will not allow our people to be sold into slavery,” Tomalson said in a very determined voice.

  “I agree. I’m thinking strategy out loud here,” Kurt replied with a nod. “But once the Profiteers return, won’t they just send more humans to Kubitz to be sold as slaves?”

  “Most likely,” Braid responded. “But going to Kubitz to buy back our people is only a cover. From what our prisoners say, it’s quite common for representatives from other worlds to show up at Kubitz to buy back their people who have been taken captive. It seems as if the Profiteer race as a whole hijacks cargo ships and passenger liners from some of the more civilized worlds on a pretty routine basis.”

  “Why do these civilized worlds tolerate this pirate activity?” asked Kurt, with a deep frown. “Why don’t they put an end to these Profiteers?”

  “Too costly,” Tomalson explained. “The commercial price of dealing with the Profiteers is far less than fighting a war with them. The Gothan Empire is careful not to overstep their raiding, lest they give the civilized worlds a sufficient reason to retaliate.”

  “So what other reason is there for me to travel to Kubitz?” Kurt asked, still eyeing the shiny bars stacked everywhere. He knew he was looking at billions of dollars in gold.

  “To procure an orbital defensive weapons system,” Tomalson said, his eyes focusing sharply on Kurt. “Most of the civilized worlds have such systems, as well as Marsten and Kubitz. It keeps their worlds safe from attacks or makes such attacks so costly as to render them impractical. We want one.”

  “Just one?” Kurt asked.

  “Yes. Put it around Newton,” answered Tomalson. “Once Newton is secure you can begin to concentrate on making it too expensive for these Profiteers to remain in the Solar System. We want you to take a page from their book. Turn your fleet into raiders, and take their ships and convoys leaving our Earth. If we can get the Profiteers to withdraw, perhaps we can eventually install such a defense system around Earth also.”

  “So why would they sell us something that cuts into their profits? And what’s to stop them from destroying my fleet when we fly into their den and selling me and my crew as slaves? Do you really think the Profiteers will allow us to walk away, once we’ve paid the ransom for our people? Plus, how do we know we can trust anything those prisoners told you? I need to see a map of Kubitz, if that’s even possible. Otherwise how are we going to find our way safely around that foreign planet that we didn’t even know existed two weeks ago?” asked Kurt, seeing a number of serious holes in the general’s and fleet admiral’s plan. What they were asking sounded nearly impossible.

  “With this,” General Braid said. He opened another door, and the three men stepped inside. Two more heavily armed Marines stood next to the wall, keeping a close watch on the third individual in the room.

  Kurt came to a stop, as he stared open mouthed at his first alien. He was humanlike in that he had two feet, coarse white hair on his head, but with larger eyes, and his skin was a light blue color. He sat tall in the chair, which make Kurt think he’d be taller than most humans when standing

  “This is Grantz,” General Braid said, gesturing toward the alien.

  The alien looked toward the three men and placed both his hands on the table he sat behind. On the table were two bars of gold. He reached out and rubbed his hands over the gold and smiled. “So you want to know about Kubitz?” he asked in a guttural-sounding voice.

  “That’s our agreement,” responded General Braid. “Two gold bars now and two more when the mission is complete.”

  Grantz looked down at the gold on the table, his hands still touching it. Kurt could almost see the greed in the Profiteer’s eyes at the thought of what that much gold could buy.

  “Four when the mission is complete, and I promise not to betray you to my people. I will act as a member of your ship’s company, until we agree that I have met my contract.”

  “Contract?” asked Kurt, looking even more confused. Had they actually bribed one of the aliens to betray his own people?

  “Yes,” muttered Fleet Admiral Tomalson unhappily. “There will be a signed contract by all parties. We will have a copy, and Grantz will have a copy. From what I understand, if he violates the contract, and we file a complaint on Kubitz with a Controller, he will be banned from doing any Profiteering for the rest of h
is life.”

  “It is our way,” Grantz explained.

  Kurt nodded; he wondered how he would explain this latest addition to his human crew. He felt a headache coming on, as he realized that his life had suddenly become even more complicated.

  Chapter Four

  High Profiteer Creed gazed in aggravation at the main viewscreen, which showed a massive cylinder-shaped ship with a flaring bow and a flared rear area that housed the warship’s powerful engines. The ship belonged to the Dacroni, a mercenary clan from the heavy-gravity world of Dacron Four. The ship was 1,100 hundred meters in length and 220 meters in diameter, except for the two flared sections that added another 100 meters in width at the fore and aft of the ship. It was covered with energy projectors and hatches, which hid hypermissile tubes. The imposing vessel was a battleship—one of the most powerful ships in the Gothan Empire.

  “Clan Leader Jarls will be aboard shortly,” Second Profiteer Lantz reported with a scowl on his face. “To hire this Dacroni clan will cost a fortune!”

  Creed knew Lantz didn’t like doing business with mercenaries; it was always very expensive. Creed agreed on both accounts.

  “Fortunately we have the credits, due to what we took from the human world,” responded Creed, dismissing Lantz’s comment. “We lost a number of valuable ships and control of Earth. We must rectify that situation immediately. We’ll hire this Dacroni clan to clear the space in the humans’ system and to remain there on guard duty for ninety days. During that time, we will plunder enough riches off the planet to enrich every member of our crews. We also have some debts on Kubitz that need to be paid off, before we’re branded as unwanted.”

  “The humans we brought back to sell should satisfy those debts,” Lantz grunted out.

  The credits they had borrowed on Kubitz had updated several of their warships, including the Ascendant Destruction, and the charges had been outrageous. However, the shipyards above Kubitz were the best in the empire.

  “Yes,” High Profiteer Creed responded with a slight nod of his head. “The humans should bring a good price, particularly the females. The pleasure houses will buy many of them. But we also need to replace the warships and crews we lost, and that’ll be a heavy cost.” Creed knew it would take a major portion of the gold, platinum, and jewels they had taken from Earth to bring his fleet up to full strength and hire the mercenaries.

  “Three battlecruisers and six escorts,” groaned Lantz.

  Yes, Creed was also concerned about the costs, not just to replace the ships. The families of the lost crews would have to be paid their share of the bounty brought back, plus sign-on bonuses were necessary for the replacement crews to override their fear of death. In all it would be very expensive but necessary.

  “A drop in the bucket if we can spend ninety days gleaning all the treasures on Earth.” Creed spoke with a light now in his large eyes, strongly suspecting they had only touched a smidgen of the gold and other treasures available on that planet. “We can pay for a new fleet, larger and far more powerful than our current one, and still have a huge reserve of credits for future expenditures. We’ll never have to worry about the Kubitz Controllers again.”

  “Our cargo ships and slave detainee ships are in orbit, waiting further orders,” Third Profiteer Bixt reported from his sensor console.

  The ships had arrived a few days ago, before Creed and his fleet’s return to the planet. On the ship’s main sensor screen, hundreds of icons were visible, representing the massive amount of vessels in orbit around the planet Kubitz. Some were other raiders, like the Ascendant Destruction, while some were passenger ships and cargo vessels.

  “We need to repair our battle damage and then return to the human system,” Creed announced. The holds of several of his ships were packed with gold, and he was anxious to return for more. That precious yellow metal meant financial freedom for his fleet.

  “Clan Leader Jarls has come aboard,” reported Third Profiteer Lukon from Communications.

  “Excellent,” Creed said, pleased that the Dacroni mercenary leader had accepted Creed’s invitation to meet. “Have him escorted to the main briefing room on the command deck.”

  “He’ll be expensive,” reiterated Lantz, shaking his head. “Hiring these mercenaries will cut into the profits from this trip.”

  “But they’re the best,” Creed answered. Fortunately they had taken more than one thousand gold bars from several underground vaults on the human planet. He took a deep fortifying breath, as he strolled purposely from the Command Center to meet Clan Leader Jarls.

  -

  A few moments later Jarls was escorted into the briefing room. His humanoid form—with his bulky legs, torso, and arms—were the result of living on a heavy-gravity world, and his powerful muscles were evident in his every step. His face was similar to a human’s but rounder and chunkier. Even his neck seemed to be shorter and thicker, with his head almost resting on his torso.

  “Greetings, Clan Leader Jarls.” High Profiteer Creed gestured for the Dacronian to have a seat.

  Jarls’s eyes lit up seeing the four bars of gold stacked prominently on the conference table directly in front of him. Creed probably thought the presence of the yellow gold bars would serve as a distraction during their meeting, to get every advantage possible.

  “Greetings, High Profiteer Creed,” Jarls replied, his eyes never leaving the gold. “I have heard that you need assistance in dealing with a rebellious alien race you’ve discovered.”

  “Yes,” replied Creed.

  The Dacronians had a reputation for garnering these contracts, even though their fees were exorbitant. Jarls knew of Creed’s need for his powerful Draconian ships. Rumors of what had happened to Creed’s fleet were already flying around Marsten and Kubitz.

  “We’ve discovered a rich world to plunder in one of the backwater regions of unexplored space,” began Creed, keeping his voice calm. “We thought we had eliminated their primitive space fleet, but another fleet we knew nothing about jumped in. My fleet was unprepared for such an unexpected attack, and we lost a number of ships before we could raise our shields.”

  “I don’t believe they’re quite as primitive as you suggest, if they could take out some of your ships,” Jarls replied with a crafty look in his eyes. “I heard what happened to your fleet in the human system.”

  He had done his research prior to coming over to the Ascendant Destruction. His people had bribed several crewmembers of the Marsten ships in order to get them to reveal what had happened. The humans did to High Profiteer Creed exactly what Jarls would have done to them. A mercenary fleet would never have let their guard down, like Creed had.

  Creed remained silent.

  “Particle weapons and KEW batteries,” Jarls said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Hyperdrives and energy shields. I don’t know if I would call them primitive.”

  “But KEW weapons,” protested Creed, shaking his head. “No one uses them anymore!”

  “Perhaps not,” replied Jarls, reaching out and touching one of the tantalizing gold bars. He ran his fingers across the metal thinking about what he could buy with several of these. “But a ship without an energy shield can easily be destroyed by the type of KEW batteries the humans used. They’re a very effective weapon in the right situation, as I’m sure you recently learned. They’re also extremely inexpensive to operate.”

  Jarls picked up one of the gold bars and knew from its weight that it was real and worth about 1.2 million credits. Credits were the universal currency used throughout the known galaxy. A fully armed battlecruiser cost around ten to twelve million credits. A battleship, like the ones he possessed, would cost around fifteen to twenty million.

  “I would like to hire your battleships to remove the threat of the human warships and to ensure that the human system stays under my control for at least ninety days,” Creed said.

  “You wish us to remove a fleet that will undoubtedly be expecting an attack,” Jarls began, as he added up the cost in his he
ad. “After the human fleet has been destroyed or driven off, we then need to hold the system for an additional ninety days, while you strip the human planet of its wealth.”

  “Yes,” Creed said in a low voice.

  “One hundred million credits up front and 10 percent of what you remove from the planet in those ninety days,” Jarls said, as he picked up a second gold bar with his other hand.

  “One hundred million credits and 10 percent!” roared Creed, standing up in anger. “That’s ridiculous. I could buy my own battleships for that price!”

  “Not with the well-trained crews I have,” Jarls answered, nonplussed by Creed’s reaction. “In ninety days, you can strip this human world of several billion credits, if this gold is an example of what’s available on that planet. I can give you ninety days of guaranteed safety to remove whatever you want from the planet, with the option to renew for another ninety days for an additional 20 percent.”

  Creed sat back down and thought over Jarls’s proposal. “You guarantee my ships’ safety?”

  “Yes,” Jarls replied. “Your ships will not be attacked while my fleet is in the system.”

  “I will agree to it with one modification. I want one of your battleships to accompany any cargo ships or detainee ships I send back to Marsten or Kubitz. I will provide my own warships as well, to help protect these convoys, but one of your battleships must go along to ensure their safety.”

  Jarls gazed at Creed thoughtfully. It sounded as if this human world might be very rich in gold and perhaps other valuables. His 10 percent could be a very sizable payoff. “I agree,” he said after a moment. “I will have you a signed contract, notarized by one of the Kubitz Controllers, within twenty-two hours.”

  “How soon before you can get to Earth?”

  “I will be taking twenty battleships,” Jarls answered. “I have twelve here and will need to send for eight more. I should be able to leave within five days.”