Imprisoned
Mark Brandon Powell
Guardian Bear Publishing
Contents
About the Author
Free Story
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Free Story
A Guardian Bear Publishing Book
Copyright © 2016 Mark Brandon Powell
All rights reserved.
About the Author
My whole life I’ve had a large imagination. When I played, with my Legos or running around outside with my friends, it wasn’t just playing. I was in a different place, I was making worlds. I would dream up stories and settings, where I would normally be the lead, or at least be looking through their eyes. Playing video games was a normalcy for the escape into some uncharted and untold world where adventure awaited, which help to fuel my own creations.
Insomnia started to become a problem for me. This was another area that I was able to fill the space with waking dreams, praying that I would be able to get to sleep. It wasn't till I met my wife in July 2011 that I really started to contemplate what I wanted to do with my life. She was able to show me how happy I could be, just by coming into my life. So I figured that I could, and should, do that for my professional life.
I started to read more books. I had been a visual entertainment consumer for much of my life, even though most of my gaming consisted of role playing games, of a heavily text base nature. Not having the visual feedback was a different feel. I liked it.
It wasn’t until after reading a few self-help books and watching - of all things -‘Sister Act 2’ (the part about what you want to be) that I started contemplating what made me happy and how I might be able to turn that into a career. In August of 2012 I had a long conversation with my wife, who was supportive of the idea, and I started to write.
My first book was finished and self-published in 2012. From there it’s all history.
Want to find out even more about me?
Markbrandonpowell
www.Markbrandonpowell.com
[email protected]
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1
“What is it now Whisper?" Kat says annoyed. It was always something with Whisper over the last few days.
“The registration fees just came out of the account. We're five credits overdrawn.”
Kat paid those, it didn't make any sense why they would be coming out again. The Felicity’s registration was just paid in full three months ago with the Earth Empire. Governments, never work they way you want and always take your money upfront. It will take weeks just to get through all the virtual intelligences so she can argue to a real person about getting a refund. A month after that, if she’s lucky, she’ll get the money back. If not It could take four.
Kat sighs, "I guess I’ll have to call the Earth Empire and deal with it."
"This was for the Guild and Conglomerate space.”
Crap. She forgot about those. With three powers that each control a few solar systems of civilized space, you have to have triplicate of everything. Each wanting their cut and don't care about working together, unless there is an outcry for it. Even then it's hard to get them to budge on an consensus together. With Kat working as a freighter, she needs to register everywhere to make sure she could make deliveries without having to smuggle things around.
Kat has been extra careful with their money recently because her and Graven are settling down on a new planet soon. Having their savings flushed down the drain of permits, taxes, or fines didn’t sit too well with her.
The planet they were headed to is called Raspiel. Its on the border of Guild and Frontier space. With it still under development, it is easy enough to sneak onto the planet and setup a little town you can call your own. Interspace law is still in a grey area around squatters rights. If you didn’t make sure someone wasn’t on your land, you lost your land. There has been more than one fight started over ownership, but that isn't new, it's a part of the risk.
Graven's friends Jack and Hanna are waiting for them there already. Jack and Hanna had run away to hide from the Guild and Empire. Hanna is wanted by both the Empire and Guild, as a defected mage and deserter. Jack her husband is wanted for being a deserter from the Empire.
Jack had recently sent a message through a secure channel he setup with Graven. Telling Graven everything is set and ready for them to get there. Kat and Graven are still about a week out and in need of supplies for the stay. Supplies which they aren't getting now without the credits to do it.
Kat grumbles, "Great. We need to make some quick credits, which usually means talking to Bob. Whisper is Graven in the Armory?"
"He is. How did you know that?"
"He's my husband, and I'm getting to know him better each day. He's probably tinkering with his knives."
Fury says, "He is, and I'm helping him."
Kat had figured. Fury has someone to talk to about weapons and ammunition that actually cared to talk about it.
Fury is into weapons, which made since to her. He is housed inside an oversized pistol. Whisper is into romance stories. Kat had heard more than her fair share of them since Whisper reads through them so quickly. It wouldn’t be so bad, but Whisper likes to go into detail. The kind of detail that can make an old sailor blush.
Kat grabs the sides of the fighter style cockpit seating she has on the bridge and heads to the Armory to talk to Graven. Her chair reminds her of her days in the Earth Empire Military. She had always just wanted to be in communications and intelligence, but one successfully decoded message later she was getting trained in everything. Tossed into a black ops program that she was never really ready for. Piloting was the one thing she was good at through all of the training. She spent a lot of time in a cockpit, and it was always a comforting place for her.
The talk with Graven she was about to have wasn’t something she was looking forward to. They both didn’t want to do anything illegal anymore, because it drew too much attention to them. They had a stolen ship, two stolen AI’s, and had bounties on their heads. Most of the legal freight they took was just pick this up here, drop it there. Sign this. The illegal stuff was always more work. Hide this, can I trust you not to screw me, oh wait you have a bounty worth more than I’m getting on this deal. Then the guns and blasters come out.
Kat reaches the Armory and opens the door. It is a thirty foot by thirty foot room filled with shelves and storage. Over the last year and a half that Graven and her had been together they added a little at a time to it. He was mostly into knives, blades, or anything sharp, but carried around a sawed off shotgun blaster. It was like a security blanket for him. Kat on the other hand didn’t really need much. Whispe
r is housed in a great short ranged weapon that she can change at will, her favorite being a row of miniature rail-guns across the back of her hand. Then Fury is in an oversized pistol with a nanite chamber. Both make their own ammunition too. So there were a lot of sharp objects inside on the walls. A couple of automatic blasters were in drawers toward the back, with a few spare energy clips, for emergencies.
Graven is at the workbench fastening a new grip to his favorite seven inch blade. That man has more accessories for that blade than a girl has shoes in her closet.
Kat says with sad tone, “Hey babe, we’re broke.”
He doesn’t turn around but answers, “How did that happen?”
“The registration fees for the Guild and Conglomerate came out. I thought we turned that off?”
“I did, but you know how governments can be. I must have contacted the wrong department or caught the person answering the call in a bad mood. Who knows.”
“So about that, I don’t want to wait for a regular job. I want to get all this over with so we can live the quite life with your friends.”
“I know all about your dream, us on the porch watching the sunset. I really don’t want to call Bob though. The last couple of jobs from him were way more work than what he paid.”
Kat says sweetly, “Please.”
Graven turns around knife and screwdriver in hand, still turning the screw. She can see the look on his face, and she doesn’t like it but bats her eyelashes at him anyways. Bob isn’t that bad of a guy, he just works outside of the law. Sure he was a womanizer, but that just made him a pig. She wasn’t even sure if Bob was his real name, but that is what he has gone by since she’s known him. He always gave them jobs that were not legal, but no one would fault them for doing it. Like delivering water to a frontier planet that the Conglomerate is controlling the water pricing or delivering medicine to a quarantined planet because the Earth Government called it a loss cause and wanted the disease to work itself out.
She smiles and keeps fluttering her eyelashes. Stretching out the word, please, one last time.
He lets out a huff and shakes his head. “Fine, I’ll call him. I would like to say out loud that I am against us doing this. We need to look for work through someone else other than Bob to get us a legal job. It may take longer but less stress.”
Kat does a little happy dance before she says, “I know, but this is the last time we have to call him. Then we are on a tropical planet looking out over somebody of water we’ve built a house in front of.”
“I just hope he doesn’t throw us into the middle of another war zone, like last time.”
“Lucky for us there isn’t a war going on right now.”
2
Kat leaves Graven to mess around with his knives and to call Bob. There is something about him that creeps her out when Bob looks at her. She isn’t quite sure if it's the way he looks at everyone or just her. Sure she thinks he isn’t a bad guy, but he does give off a heavy creeper vibe and would not want to be stuck in a room alone with him. It would take Graven about an hour to contact Bob and find a suitable job, which left her with some free time. Free time means game time.
Walking back into her quarters and into the corner where she keeps a pile of pillows. She grabs them, throwing them on the king sized bed and lays down. The room was thirteen feet by thirteen feet and was originally set up for bunkbeds, like all of the rooms on the Felicity. Before she took the ship, it was planned to be an armored personnel carrier, or APC for short. There were six rooms set up with an armory, storage, and common area in addition to the normal engine room and bridge. Felicity’s original purpose was to be filled with soldiers and have them be a stealth strike squad. All of which came in handy when trying to escape or infiltrate places to make deliveries that she shouldn’t be in.
Her and Graven took out the bunkbeds, added a couple of storage cabinets to either side, and tried to decorate lightly. Kat stares at the Star Wars poster on the wall that Graven had insisted on getting. He said it was a classic, from a golden age of movies when you had to watch them on a flat screen. She argued that it shouldn’t go in the bedroom, and to just put it in the Armory, since that was his space. In the end, Kat just gave in. He was overly persistent about it.
She sits up to make a nest of pillows and blankets, she wanted to be comfortable for when she played her game. Whisper had been downloading things across the interstellar-net and had found a few virtual reality games that were meant for large rooms and full VR gear. Whisper was able to let Kat play them just using her interface. Gaming was something Kat had been getting more and more into. There was a lot of free time between ports. Graven was spending more and more time in the armory, so there wasn’t much else for her to do. She could read all those romance novels that Whisper downloads, but she already knows them all.
Kat says laying down in her pile of fluffiness, “Hey Whisper, can you load up that game we were playing yesterday.”
“Yes, I can load that for you, but don’t you think there are better things to spend your time on. Like expanding your meat brain through reading, or cleaning your cybernetics that you have been failing to do.”
“Just load the game I don’t need a lecture.”
“What if I forced you to get up and clean yourself?”
“Whisper I clean myself everyday with a shower, so what are you talking about?”
“Your cybernetics need a tuneup. Not that I would expect an ape to understand, but your body is part machine. Which means maintenance. This is something I can do, but we have to go to the medical bay.”
Kat had been avoiding anything dealing with her cybernetics. It was around the same time Graven came into her life. She had almost died in an explosion her psycho ex-lover had setup. He then saved her life by rebuilding her with cybernetics in an attempt to keep controlling her. She hated being part machine and he knew she would.
Kat is annoyed, but tries to hold it back when she says, “Look Whisper, just load up the new Blizzard game already. I’m itching to play it.”
Whisper laughs, “Itching huh. Sounds like you need that tuneup more than I thought.”
“Ugh, Whisper. Your my friend, not my mother. So stop acting like it.”
“Katrice, you need to take better care of yourself. It doesn’t matter if you like your cybernetics or not, you have them and need to take care of them.”
Kat sighs, because she knew Whisper was right. There wasn’t any way for her to go back now. She had to treat it like a medical check up, and start doing them.
She says, “Fine, I’ll go. So I guess that means no gaming right now?”
“Nope, get your flesh-bag moving to the med-bay so I can give you a tuneup.”
Kat crawls out of the comfortable pile and lets out a groan. She didn’t want to get a tuneup, nor did she believe that humans should have to get tuneups. If Ryker was alive, she would kill him all over again for putting her through this. It was turning out to be one of those days for her where everything seemed against her. She could always go back to bed and just forget this day ever happened, but ignores the urge.
As she walks to the med-bay thoughts of Graven bubble to the surface. The months she spent with him in the med-bay just laying there asleep. There were still so many things about the man she didn’t know. Then there was the recent pull away. Right after they left Bexar Omega he started to get distant. The first few jobs they took were medicine supply runs to banned planets. The diseases were so bad on the surface they had to use orbital drops to deliver the goods. After that was Planet Nix. Something they never really talk about. It even left her with a bad taste in her mouth after that one.
She could always try lingerie, but doesn’t think she needs to resort to that just yet. Talking would be the first step, which she just hasn’t done. Mainly because she doesn’t think she has too. He’s the one missing out on all that is her, and she knows he loves her. The look in his eyes haven’t changed, and when they do kiss the spark is still there. He’s just dist
ant everywhere else. He might be going through something and Kat doesn’t want to butt in. Yet. If he wants to he can come to her. She just can’t help but feel that he doesn’t find her as attractive anymore. They were all over each other for months and now its been months. He should apologize or do something romantic. She nods her head in agreement to her thoughts as she walks into the med-bay.
Whisper asks her to take off her clothes. She rolls her eyes and does it. Looking down at her leg, still exposed from when Graven and her met. A shotgun blaster to her cybernetic leg. It was something that was like a memento and reminder all in one. She runs her finger across the metal, and it has a slight warmth to it thanks to the composite flesh surrounding it.
Resealing the composite flesh that is covering her cybernetics would have been simple to do, but she just hasn’t been able to make herself go do it. There has been a lot that has happened, but maybe its time to get it done. The medical bay on Felicity’s is one of the best in the solar systems, so she hopes it can.
Kat gathers up the courage to ask Whisper about covering the exposed parts. Not really sure if that is something she really wants.
“Hey Whisper, can you fix the hole in my leg?”
“The equipment is here if that’s what you’re asking. If you’re asking if I can do it, then no. I don’t have the programing. Plus I think you look better that way. It makes me feel like you are more like me, and I like that.”
“More like you, as in the human hating A.I. that reads trashy novels all day long.”
“They are not trashy. They are every bit as good as regular fiction just with some added spice.”
“So is that what you call it? Ouch, watch that.”
Whisper laughs, “Oh did I do that. I’ll have to watch myself better next time because you're distracting me.”
Starship Magic 2: Imprisoned Page 1