by RJ
Despite the little usefulness of those inventions, JB accepted the equipment. He didn’t want to offend Doc by being smart-ass all the time. Moreover, JB could relate to that. As a scientist, Gibson was a prisoner of his unique mind and imagination. And it was sort of JB’s job as a friend to embrace that in Mark. Soon they said their goodbyes and the ranger left the station.
Two days on that planet was a rather short mission indeed. Just one last assignment was left for Bridgers to finish. This one was from the military. The beneficiary was the ‘Indigo’ station of the Sun system. The mission was to find a lost agent on Earth. JB had to investigate what had happened to the agent and to rescue him if possible. If not, then delivery of the agent’s personal things was the next priority. Nothing else was said in the mission description, nothing about the agent himself or about the task he was up to. The location remained unrevealed yet. JB would be given that on arrival to Earth.
Another day passed. The ranger was on a straight line to the Sun. He had just about thirty-six hours of flight ahead of him. Everything was going fine. Just as the mutant had a first chance to relax after several sleepless weeks, three ships appeared on the radar. They flew at high speed and headed straight for him. It was quite unusual for pilots to keep that close a distance, especially when space was free like that.
The unknown vessels kept on speeding, several more minutes and they would crash over the ranger’s transport. Suddenly, they spread out and circled JB from different directions. One of the aggressors flew on the same level in front of JB and took an offensive position. He fired two blasts at the ranger right after to reveal their true intentions. A force screen had blocked the attack, but it shook the vessel pretty good anyway. JB got woken up at once and rushed to the pilot’s seat. There were three ships on the radar around him, but no alert had warned him beforehand. After checking the equipment’s state, JB removed the titanium screen off the windshield and gradually dropped the speed until the full stop.
Now they were face to face with each other.
“Hey, bro! You’re on our territory! It’s time to pay a toll!” a male voice sounded from the speaker.
“No shit? Are you serious?” the ranger said arrogantly.
“You’re a lucky one, actually. I'm in a good spirit today, so let’s call it ten thousand galls and you can move on.”
“Oh, I have an offer for you. You shove ya threats up ya ass, take ya girlfriends and fuck off.”
“Are you retarded, or do you just not know how to count? There are three of us. You’re alone.”
“Three idiots is a disadvantage, I’d say.”
“So should I just pop you up and pick up what’s left of your ship? Sounds good to me. Get me my money!”
“Pirates…” JB stretched out. “There are three mistakes.”
“What mistakes, ranger?”
“You three are the mistakes!” JB grew a sly smirk.
Not listening further, the pirate released a massive charge from the plasma cannon at his target. The ranger’s vessel moved down and sideways, getting right under the enemy’s ship. Then he pulled up the back side of his machine to push the pirate forward, where his comrades were.
“Free advice: learn how to shoot before you attack a ranger!”
The corsairs couldn’t even get around what had happened when all three of them were at gunpoint. Not saying much more, JB activated four rocket launchers to hit all of them instantly. The weapon sockets opened up, the launcher spinners went spinning, but it seemed that there was not a single rocket onboard.
It bummed JB quite a bit. The maintenance personnel had to recharge the weapons when he visited Gibson’s base. The ranger had to overestimate their competence. His second of advantage passed. The pirates reacted and went spreading around once again.
“I have to give it to you, ranger. You almost got me. Almost…” a satisfied smirk of the bandit’s appeared on the screen again. “Kill him!”
All four ships launched instantly. JB flew straight on his course to gain some distance, the others chased him. The first phaser charges flashed along his side illuminators. He didn’t even try to wiggle much, knowing that such hits were nothing for his force screen to handle. But, suddenly, the two charges hit the ship and the alert went off. A board panel showed the damage on the ship’s armor. Now it was time to get nervous.
JB turn to the control panel to run a diagnostic test on the vessel’s systems. Meanwhile, he tried to do the best he could to avoid the shooting. The mutant used every maneuver he could remember from the book, and it was helping for a while. But those pirates weren’t newbies. They knew what they were doing, and soon the old school tricks wouldn’t be enough.
The diagnostic showed malfunctions in weaponry, protection and auto piloting systems.
“Da fuck?” came out of JB when he read the results.
“What do you say, ranger?! Don’t you wish you would have taken that offer?” the pirate asked.
“I’m not talking to you…”
The corsair saw as JB was rushing between the panels, not paying any attention to that conversation or the steering wheel.
“We still may let you go. Let’s call it twenty thousand. What do you say?”
“I’m not done with you yet!”
Knowing that the pirates were aware of those malfunctions, JB gained an annoying itch in the back of his head. He had lost confidence in winning that battle. Just a half hour before, all systems were fine, and now even autopilot didn’t work. The force field generator went out after the first hit. It wasn’t the hardware, if so, those troubles would have shown themselves a while ago. Besides, all those systems were independent of one another. The ranger’s conclusion was a central processor malfunction. The diversion wasn’t hard for an experienced pilot to recognize. He had to fight against three enemies controlling the spacecraft by hand and without armor or weapons.
Wiggling around to dodge the shooting wasn’t new for JB. But his sense of the powerful energy sources was letting him know that on board one of those ships something much more dangerous was coming up. Soon the charging process would be finished and then he would have a real problem to face. He had to do something that instant. There was no time to fix the central systems accurately, but he needed to find a way of making the autopilot work so he could leave the cockpit.
JB took an average sized container from under the control panel. There was a device inside. A stylized mechanical bug. He fixed it on the steering wheel, with the bug’s legs spread in all directions. A command list appeared on the device’s screen. The ranger picked one and immediately unbuckled himself to run out of the cabin. The ship’s speed increased significantly. The vessel was controlled by the bug now. Those predefined variations of flight trajectories would give JB some extra time before the pirates got that they had been tricked.
In a few minutes, JB returned to the cabin. The first thing he did was check for new damage on the ship. There was some, but not too much. The piloting device had served its purpose and was put back under the panel.
“You seem to be the one brain cooked nut, ranger! I give you one last chance! Thirty thousand galls and you can go!”
“We’ll see…” JB mumbled to himself, he even ignored the communication screen this time.
He opened a gravicrane control panel, one of not many working systems. Then he unlocked the back gate of the ship. JB had prepared something for the pirates in the trunk when he had gone there. Four barrels of fuel marked ‘SN-10’ flew out in the open space. Each had a small bomb attached to it. It was time for the pilot to slow down and to face his enemies. The pirates must have thought that he was ready to surrender. They stopped too. Right where the barrels were spread around.
Not waiting for another call, JB used the detonation button. Four explosions followed. An enormous splash wave came out of the bright yellow flashes of light. There was no massive explosion power in that trick, though. In fact, pirate ships didn’t even flinch. But the sun dust had filled t
he space closest to them fully.
“A desperate move, ranger. But your plan was meant to fail from the beginning. A simple explosive isn’t enough to make hyper-fuel detonate,” the pirate’s self-satisfied smirk went even wider.
“No, but the plasma hit is enough…” JB said to himself, with the intercom turned off.
“As you wish. Fire!”
The moment the enemy ships’ weapon flaps got opened JB went upwards and hit full speed. It was the plasma gun recharging, the same great power that JB had sensed earlier. The pirate finally released it. A bright flash emerged behind the mutant’s vessel. The hyper-fuel's explosions was a nasty one. At first it burst out, then it reversed the effect by sucking everything in. Now there was just some package left from the enemy ships.
JB flew away to a safe distance. He stopped his vessel and sat still in his seat. There was lots of work fixing the instruments ahead. And just enough time to figure everything out.
After going through the software, the ranger spotted a virus that was the reason for all of those problems. JB had lots of different theories in his mind about how the virus might have got to his ship. The most obvious one was that it had been done by the same person who unloaded his weapon supplies.
There is a rat among one of Gibson’s men… Interesting…
In two days, the ship arrived at Earth. After entering the planetary orbit space, the vessel got in the jurisdiction of the local government. The details of the mission unlocked.
The destination was the rahtiongs’ temporary reservation marked ‘SWA-34.15,' Australia. The prime mission – find the agent X638. The secondary mission – collect the materials gathered by X638. Time left: fifty-eight hours.
There was nothing about the initiation party of the mission or about the executor. There also was some data about the environment and the layout, but that intel barely scratched the surface, useless to the agent. Yet, he needed to know as much as it was possible before landing. JB launched up the Info-net browser to reach those who knew about some things more than any intelligence service. And there was one place in the borderless web-space: the chatroom of the popular online game ‘The Universe of Warcraft.’ The ranger entered the game and looked through his friend list to find the wise guys. A chat window popped up with three names in it; Corvin, Syrus and Sall.
“Oh! JB! You space dog!” Corvin replied instantly. “Where have you been? Huh? We're not having the best times here in the guild, you know!”
“Really? So maybe you should spend less time in Warcraft and care about your job more… Then, perhaps, a cyber-guild wouldn’t trouble you that much,” JB lectured his old friend. In return, Corvin just rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m not here for that. Tell me, Corvin, what do you know about the rahtiongian reservation ‘SWA-34.15’?”
“Is that the one on Earth?” the other ranger asked.
“Yep, that’s the one.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard something…” another chat message came through. “Hold on a sec, I’ll switch to video.”
The screen changed into three windows with different people. Corvin was their group leader. He hadn’t changed a bit for the past five years. Same handsome brunet with long hair and brown eyes. But his overall look wouldn’t win any prices. He looked tired, unshaven and wore a filthy crumpled pilot suit, which was especially noticeable because of the yellow color. A can of Ranger Juice as usual was glued to his hand. The other two rangers were well known to JB as well. Syrus and Sall, formerly known as Vladimir and Steve. They had changed their IDs after applying to be rangers.
“Hello, JB!”
“B,” the guys said their greetings.
“Great to see you, guys!” JB said in return.
Corvin turned to the chat screen from the main one, which was his primary focus for all that time.
“Look, J, why did you hail us via the ‘tactical training’ server?” the yellow pilot wondered.
“The gaming server…” JB corrected him. Corvin replied with another mean grimace. “Because these channels aren’t screened by the government. Enough already. Let’s get back to business.”
“Okay-okay… The reservation, right?” Corvin turned to the main screen again, leaving the friends with his profile view. Then he started to read out the information. “The object was found in twenty-nine fourteen by the rahtiong government. The official purpose – an adaption to the Earth climate of their kind. An artificial flora formation research… Long story short, they wanted to prepare the process of restoring the planet Rockos of the Hatsya system after the atomic war,” The ranger summarized. “The number of rahtiongs in the reservation was four hundred fifty-eight, according to the data of twenty-nine sixty-nine. The facility is on the fifth level of classification seal. Honestly, I have no idea why that plant garden is interesting to you.”
“Hm… Weird… I had an impression that it was supposed to be a small town or something…” JB was thinking out loud. “Send me a full profile on that place.”
“So you were sent there on a mission?” Corvin cheerfully shouted. “Am I an agent’s consultant now?” he went on with the thought. “Is there a reward?”
“I’ll get you some rahtiong plants from the reservation!” JB joked as he was watching the download progress bar.
“Yeah! That is a plant garden, right!” Corvin sparked in a crazy idea. “I’ve heard a rumor that redfaces grow a special kind of reed, ten grams’ tincture from which may replace a whole can of ‘juice.' If you get me a few boxes, I’ll be very grateful.”
“What? Who spreads rumors like that?” the big guy resented.
“What do you mean who?” Corvin replied. “First time I heard that was from Eddie. He just ran there himself, on Earth to those botanists of yours. Well, you know that ranger Eddie guy, right? Scallywag of a kind! Always pushes his junk to whoever he may!”
“You mean the famous ranger-trader, Edward Cody?” JB cleared up.
“What? Trader, you say?” Corvin laughed. “A crook like all crooks! One thing, the boat of his is awesome…”
Taking into account the well-known manners of his comrade’s, JB tried to filter out half what was coming from Corvin. But the essential things appeared to be gold very often.
“So, you say Edward Cody went to Earth a week ago? To visit the same rahtiong reservation?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He was so wasted that night; I barely could get what he was saying… But, there aren’t that many places on Earth like that, so perhaps you still may meet him there…”
“I see…” JB pronounced thoughtfully.
Meanwhile, Syrus was listening carefully to that conversation and waited for the right moment to contribute himself.
“Are you still here, B?” the ranger addressed his old friend. JB turned to another chat window and nodded. “I think you need to know something else…”
“I’m listening.”
“Two days ago Skyman’s group arrived at Sun system either. They were coming to Earth. You think that’s a coincidence?”
Just hearing a name of the person he used to know as a plane pilot, who now became a somewhat of a legend among the militaries, the mutant got interested. He looked at Sall’s window. The third ranger agreeably nodded.
“How do you know that? Are you watching them or something?” JB asked.
“Always! Each day since that Arturukv massacre!” Syrus confirmed.
“It’s like a hobby for them,” Corvin added when opening a fresh can of juice.
After talking to his colleague-rangers, JB was left with more questions than before. Yet, he did get plenty of valuable information. It was time to move on. There still were a few hours of flight ahead of him. The agent had to think everything through, so when landing, he would have more or less a complete picture.
JB warmly said his goodbyes to the comrades and turned off the communication channel. Now he had to fully give himself to the mission.
What do I know?
Fact 1: the ranger, Edward Cody, one of
the top traders of the GU, went to the reservation a week ago.
Fact 2: I have to find a missing agent, who went to the same reservation approximately the same time.
Fact 3: Colonel Skyman’s intelligence group arrived at Earth two days ago.
Might the ranger-trader be the same secret agent I’m looking for? Do Skyman’s people search for the same thing I do? Why would the heat-loving race build a research center on a frozen rock?
Australia was the only remaining continent on Earth, and it was still under thick ice cover since the last nuclear war. The continent’s microclimate provided the perfect conditions for exploring different methods of creating setups for living on planets with similar climate. The scouts quickly learned that it was much more efficient and easy to create a place to live than to find a suitable one. Earth, with its diverse climate, was marked as a planet of ‘E’ class (one of the few), where such researches were conducted. That was why other civilizations paid substantial resources for licensing such research.
The reservation belonged to the most aggressive race among the GU. Any experienced pilot knew that it was much better not to contact rahtiongs on their territory. Especially when it involved spying. Especially alone.
Behind the thick wall of a snow blizzard, a ranger ship showed up. Several of the station’s spotlights lit the vessel from different angles. It hovered over a small local spaceport and then approached landing after the permission was granted. A landing zone consisted of four platforms, made for the ships of classes ‘A’ and ‘B.’ There also was one large hangar for massive class ‘C’ ships.
With the first touch of the spacecraft to the ground, three men came out of the building: a blond man of average height and two giant rahtiongs. Despite the extremely cold weather, they wore just a light uniform. JB took quite a share of interest in that since he was going to wear something warm, and that even taking into account his unique organism. But looking at those who were waiting for him in the blizzard made him curious how they could stand the cold. It seemed very unnatural.