It was a good idea, but many unsavory elements, also known as pirates, took to this legalization to increase their illegal activities. It was arguable that some privateers were nothing more than motivate and legitimate businessmen who made a profit from attacking the Confederation’s enemies. It was also arguable that some of these privateers were nothing more than pirates playing both sides for their own illicit gain.
Glancing back across the bar, Mike knew he was looking at the latter. They were a motley crew, dressed in syntho leathers with bits and pieces of metal and plastex ornaments or parts of body armor. Some were bearded, while others just looked like they needed a shave. From the smell of the bar, he would have bet good credits that they all needed a bath.
“Like I said, they seem to know you, Gunny,” he said as both a statement and a question.
Gunny continued to the far table, but turned his head to glance at the bar. “Unfortunately! When the war broke out I tried to return to the service, but they said I was too old. So, I came here to try to sign up for a privateer ship: little did I know that they were nothing but scum!”
It was amazing how these so-called “privateers” really wanted to look the part of Victorian pirates. If he was a privateer or even a pirate, the last thing he would want to do was advertise the fact, let alone look like an idiot or an escapee from a queer colony.
Their leader could be easily picked out from the rest, being the worst of the fashion victims and yet, still the best dressed among them. He was almost elegant in a kind of way that made you think of an ugly sister dressing up for the ball. He had calf-high dress boots of real leather with skintight brown trousers, which were tucked into the top of the boots. His shirt was black silk, whether it was real or synthetic, Mike couldn’t tell from this distance.
Thrown across the back of his bar stool was a long, black trench coat. Buckled about his waist was a weapons’ belt with a spacer’s gyro pistol, even though the local government had laws against the public display and wearing of arms.
It looked like he had a knife or a very short baton hanging against his other hip, but Collins couldn’t be sure. It was easy to figure out that he was their boss because they all looked to him for approval after every joke or comment. He was tall and of multi-racial descent, being some kind of mix of Caucasian, African, and Asian. His hair was short and curly, yet blonde in color.
It was his odd-looking hair that made Mike remember having seen his picture before from a news vid or an E-paper article. His name was Peter Alexander, and he was the captain of an armed privateer freighter named the Chaos.
His men and the press liked to call him Alexander the Great, a nickname he got after he and his crew had boarded and taken control of a Karduan destroyer escort. This enemy starship was the approximate size and had the equivalent firepower of a Confederation frigate. He and his crew claimed it as a prize ship and renamed it the Anarchy.
It was a remarkable victory and it briefly made the privateers the talk of the planet, as well as the media’s darlings. Since then, the two ships operated together and usually brought back stolen supplies or captured smaller ships, but nothing as daring as their first triumph.
Ignoring them for the moment, Mike looked to the table where the Gunny had stopped. The funny thing was, there was no one sitting there. In fact, there was only a glass with melted ice and a tipped-over and empty whiskey bottle.
Reaching down, the old marine pulled back a chair and revealed a body facedown underneath the table. The body was dressed in soiled clothing and smelled as if he had bathed in a bottle of gin. Next to his head was a pool of vomit.
“Lend us a hand, Mister Collins,” Gunny said as he pulled the limp body out from under the table.
Grabbing an arm, he helped to hoist the dead weight of the man into the chair. Stepping back, he let out his held breath and exhaled the stench that had assaulted his senses. From the feel and smell of the body, he wondered if the guy was dead.
Shaking his head, he watched as the Gunny gently wiped the spit and dried puke from the man’s face. “You got to be kidding,” Mike said, “This guy is a drunk!”
“Don’t judge him too harshly,” he whispered, as if he didn’t want the inebriated man to hear them. “He lost his wife and boy to a Karduan raider, a ship that got by his patrol. Then the base shrink puts him on anti-depressants, which he mixes with booze until he is no longer fit for service.”
“Who is he, and why is he so important?”
Masters looked up solemnly at Collins’ face before he answered. “He saved my life once, and he is my friend.”
Mike nodded, understanding that in their world -- the world of the warrior -- that was enough to fight for, to kill for, and to die for. “We better get him out of here. I think our friends over there are starting to take an interest,” he said, glancing back to the privateers.
Sure enough, the six men by the bar were heading right for them. They were all smiling, and they looked as if they wanted to have a little fun.
“Hey, what are you doing with our pet?” one of them called.
Another hurried and stepped around the last table between them. “Where do you think you’re going with Borochun?” he asked, stepping into the Gunny’s path.
The man was roughly Gunny’s size, close to two meters, but he must have had at least ten kilos of pure muscle on him, and was also forty years his junior.
Gunny’s eyes squinted and never left the bruiser as he let the drunk slide into a nearby seat. “The Commander is coming with us!”
The hulk laughed, looked away for a moment, and came back swinging. He let loose with a mighty right hook that would have smashed the old man’s head to a pulp. Of course, that would have been true, except that the old marine had moved.
Masters sidestepped to the right and drove an angular kick into the side of the man’s knee. He was rewarded with a loud pop followed by the bruiser’s girl-like scream of pain. Fortunately, the scream was cut short as the Gunny smashed a vertical punch into his throat, crushing his larynx.
Their reaction was almost predictable: the remaining privateers rushed toward them. One of them had grabbed a chair and raised it above his head to slam down on the distracted oldster’s head.
As the chair reached its zenith, it suddenly disintegrated into a cloud of metal and plastex fragments, which showered down around them. The whole room froze as they realized that someone had fired a burst from a gauss pistol. All eyes turned toward the shooter.
“All right, now that I have your attention, this is what you’re going to do,” Mike started, holding the Krager in a relaxed but ready position.
Before he could say another word, a privateer with a glowing neon facial tattoo of a spider, hand went toward his inner coat and the butt of a gun. In the next instant, he was on the floor with a shock dart sticking through the head of his spider tattoo.
“Now, as I was saying, we are going to be leaving with our friend and no one is going to interfere with us,” he said, not looking to see what the Gunny was doing, but keeping his eyes on the remaining four men and especially their gaudy leader.
Alexander the Great frowned, but then smiled and waved his hand graciously toward the door. “Fine, take the Borochun,” he said, still smiling. “After all, he’s nothing but a fucking drunk and will crawl his way back here eventually.”
Gunny had drawn his 8mm caseless pistol with his free hand after he had heaved the still unconscious commander over his shoulder. Backing toward the door, he waited, now covering the ensign, who had stayed behind to protect his withdrawal.
Mike took a step back, but then stopped and looked intensely at Captain Alexander’s belt.
“What are you looking at, pup, or are you just cruising for some action?” he said, followed by chorus of laughter.
In response, Mike fired a single gauss round between his legs, just missing his crotch. It was all he could do not to shoot him.
“You fucking punk!” Alexander swore, jumping back as his f
ace looked shocked and angry at the same time.
One of his men to his right reached for his pistol, but an 8mm round took him in the arm, spinning him around like a top and sending him sprawling to the floor. “Any time, sir!” the Gunny said, trying not to use names.
“One minute, Top,” he called over his shoulder without looking. “What is that?” he asked, still watching the privateer captain and pointing with his pistol to the cylinder at his belt. He had earlier thought it was a knife handle or a baton, but now he saw that it was something completely different.
The privateer looked incredulous “What’s this?” he said, moving his hand to the cylinder at his belt. “It’s just a souvenir I took from a knight I met once. He no longer needed it.”
As the pirates laughed, Mike moved his pistol up and took aim at his crotch. “Nice and easy, you’re going to take it off and roll it over to me.”
The captain smiled. “You want it? Come and get it, puppy!” he said and started to take hold of the cylinder. As he grasped it, a narrow sword blade extended from the cylinder in a blink of an eye.
Even though Mike had been ready for the move, having almost expecting it, he nearly stepped forward when the pirate smiled and said to come and get it. Without flinching, he shot him in the groin. Lucky for the rogue, Mike was feeling gracious and had his Krager set on shock dart mode. Instead of emasculating him, he sent him to the floor in a crumpled and paralyzed heap.
Walking over, he leveled his pistol on the next closest man and directed him away with a wave. Reaching down, he pulled the privateer’s gyro pistol from its holster. Putting the weapon into his coat pocket, he then picked up the extension sword. Though he had never handled this type of weapon before, he had read all about them and quickly found the thumb sensor and retracted the blade. Backing toward the doorway, he gave them all a big smile.
“Have a nice day!” he said, letting the Gunny slip out first. Pausing in the doorway, he fired a burst of gauss rounds into the bar’s overhead lights, sending a shower of sparks onto the floor and bar below. He then quickly ran to the waiting pickup truck.
As the door closed, a chorus of curses and promises followed them. “We’ll fucking find you, and we’ll fucking kill you!” was the last one he heard before they pulled away.
Chapter Four
As they pealed away, Mike looked back to see if they were being followed, but it appeared to be all clear. “Hey, your buddy is puking all over the bed of your truck.”
Masters stared at the flaxen-haired youth and shook his head in disbelief. "Sir, you must have balls the size of watermelons!”
Mike shrugged his shoulders, still in a bit of shock over the whole thing. He couldn’t believe that he had done what he had done either. “I couldn’t just stand there, after all,” he said, not really sure if he needed to defend his actions.
The old marine started to laugh and shook his head, smiling like the cat that ate the canary.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“I’m just glad I picked you when I needed someone to come with me,” he said, and then looked down to the gauss pistol still in the young officer’s hand. “And where the hell did you get a gauss pistol, let alone a CCF issue Krager?”
His old friend’s words were strangely comforting, and now it was his turn to laugh. “It was a graduation present from my father.” Holstering his Krager, he took a look at the two weapons he had taken from the privateer captain.
The first was the gyro pistol, which was a standard Colt 8mm starburst model that many spacers preferred. It had a slow rate of fire, but all of its kinetic energy was vented out its side ports, easily explaining its starburst nickname. Because it completely vented the recoiled energy, it didn’t cause a shooter in zero gravity situations to be propelled in the opposite direction.
Putting the pistol back in his coat pocket, Mike thought that it would make a good backup gun for his gauss. Taking the second weapon from his pocket, he looked down at the smooth, metallic cylinder.
The Gunny glanced over at the cylinder. "I hope that was worth it, cause if they weren’t pissed at us before, they’re sure as hell are pissed at us now!” He paused for a second and then broke out in laughter. “Shit! On second thought, I bet Alexander the Pompous won’t be able to piss for at least a week!”
“Yeah, I guess I’d have to admit, that was pretty funny, but you don’t know how close I was to needling him,” he admitted, a little embarrassed at his own anger.
Masters nodded, understanding the young man’s internal battle. “But you didn’t, even though he probably deserves it and would do worse to us if he could get his hands on us.”
Mike knew that the Gunny was trying to make him feel better, but it really just made him feel worse. He didn’t want to think about the privateers catching up to them or the idea that he could have cut the serpent’s head from its body and didn’t.
“So what’s so special about that?” he asked, dipping his head toward the cylinder.
“It’s a sword,” Mike said rather bluntly.
“Funny, I know it is a sword, wise guy, but why risk your neck for it?” Masters asked, resisting the urge to smack him.
Rolling the cylinder in his hand, he looked down at the thumb sensor. It was in the shape of a shield; normally it would have had a coat of arms emblazed on the sensor of an order of knighthood or the family arms of the knight who owned it. This sword’s crest-shaped sensor pad had been removed, probably to deter identification or possibly during the subversion of its programming.
The sword’s activation sensor should have been DNA locked to the user or keyed into a weapon’s chip that both the military and police often used to keep their captured weapons out of the hands of criminals or enemy combatants. Neither Mike nor the privateer captain should have been able to operate it. The weapon’s internal circuits should have been fired when it had been tampered with. Whoever had rewired it must have been good - very good.
“It is a knight’s carbon sword,” Collins started to explain, “I’ve read about them, but I’ve never seen one before. I don’t even know which order it belongs to, but one thing is for sure: he didn’t deserve it, and there was no way I was going to let him keep it.”
“Morals like that can get you killed, sir,” the older, wiser, and street-hardened man said, sounding as if it was a matter of fact.
Looking down at the hilt, Mike realized that he really didn’t care about that. A sword like this was not just a weapon, but was also a symbol of something more.
From what he saw from the bar, it was a standard knight’s polycarbon extension sword, which was able to spring from its cylinder to full sword length with the simple touch of a thumb. "The question is: to whom do I return it to?”
“Well Mister Collins, it found its way to you. When it’s time, it will find its way home.”
“What about our friend in the back, what do we do with him?” he asked, glancing back to the truck’s bed and seeing that the drunk was still unconscious.
Stopping the pickup, the old, wrinkled face of leather cracked into a broad smile. “No problem, we’re here!”
Looking out the window, Mike saw that they were parked outside a plain-looking building made of brown brick and gray mortar. It was in a run-down and improvised neighborhood that looked like it had seen better days. In front of the building was an unlit sign that read “Good Samaritan Public Clinic.” The sign also had a purple graffiti cross spray-painted across its surface.
“Aren’t they going to ask questions?”
“Not here,” Masters said, getting out of the truck and moving to the tailgate. “Not over a drunk,” he whispered, reaching down and carefully pulling the unconscious man to the edge of the truck’s bed. They then each grabbed an arm and carried him into the waiting room. “Besides, I have an old friend who works here,” he said with a mischievous smile.
The waiting room had a pair of occupants: a mother of mixed Anglo and Hispanic decent and her child of mixed Anglo, Hisp
anic, and Asian linage. The young mother of no more than twenty years was holding the crying baby, signing a soft Spanish melody to her sick child.
Setting their friend down on a row of old, hard, plastic-formed seats, the Gunny left him with the drunk to check in with the bored-looking receptionist.
This gave Mike a chance to look at the man that they risked their lives for. His hair was dark with some slight graying. His pale face looked tired and old, but that was partly due to his current lifestyle. His clothes were soiled so badly that they should have been burned. Overall, he was a wreck, but even drunk, dirty, and unshaved, Mike could see that there might be a man under it all.
Masters retuned and took the drunk’s arm. “The Doc can see us now.”
Standing up, Mike grabbed his other arm and helped drag and half carry him to a door that led to a waiting room. Together they hoisted him onto an examination table. Gunny looked at his friend for a moment, reached out with his hand, and felt for his pulse at his neck. “Believe it or not, it’s good and strong,” he said with a smile.
At that moment, the doctor arrived, practically barging into the room. Ignoring the two men, she crossed directly to her patient. The doctor was short and at least sixty-five years old, but a very fit sixty-five. Her gray, uncolored hair was pulled back into a bun, and at the moment, her face had a serious set to it. Though not a raving beauty, she must have been quite pretty when she was younger. Her white skin was pale with fine lines crossing her face and a set of deep dimples from a lifetime of smiling.
Pulling a medical palm pad from her white coat, she scanned his entire body. Looking carefully at the readings, she shook her head and frowned. “Jack, you should have rounded him up a week ago,” she commented, pulling back one of the drunk’s eyelids and peering into his eye.
“Sorry, Edie, but we had to stick to the plan. If I had gotten him any earlier, he would have fallen off the wagon again or maybe even talked.”
The Log of the Gray Wolf (Star Wolf Squadron Book 1) Page 5