by T. R. Harris
Adam went to the food processor and ordered up a helping of bacon and eggs, or what passed as bacon and eggs aboard the Klin ship. Jym had modified the unit to conjure up a few traditional Human meals, since the bulk of the programming was for Klin food alone. Kaylor and Jym didn’t have a problem with the Klin diet, but Adam did. Now he had his choice between bacon and eggs, a pale pork-like dish or cereal. He was getting tired of all three.
However, the processor did make a decent cup of coffee, and that was what he really needed. He’d been running at a frantic pace just to keep his head above water. It was six months into his new business and he was paying the bills, but failing in his ultimate goal to get closer to Earth.
“Your law advocate left a message for you two days ago,” Jym said just as Adam dug into his depressingly bland meal.
“Did he say why he was calling?”
“No, just asked for a return link when possible.”
“When possible, or as soon as possible?” Adam was hoping it was an urgent call with good news.
“When possible were his exact words.”
Adam would call his lawyer back when he finished eating.
“And Adam, I have located another of our target fugitives. He initiated a CW link three days ago on Risnos.”
“Where’s that?”
“Sector Nine…near Hyben.”
“Who is he?”
“An Andorian named Lundin. The reward is twenty-five thousand.”
Adam grimaced. Hyben was two thousand light-years away. It would take him and Kaylor over a week just to get there and use up the last of the energy in the mod. They would need a new one before they left on the mission, at a cost of four thousand credits. That, plus the time it would take getting there and back, made the bounty hardly worth the effort. Twenty-five-thousand wasn’t enough.
“Anything closer…and for more credits?”
“I have thirty-five potentials within the current search. That’s all the Klin computers can handle at a time. So far, Lundin was the only one who made a link.”
“Keep looking.”
After the trio had taken over the Colony Ship, Jym discovered the Klin computers had the ability to monitor all the Continuous Wormhole communications in the galaxy—for an entire day. It was an incredible amount of information and only possible because the Klin had the most-advanced technology in the galaxy. But it was only for a day. After that the data had to be dumped to make room for another.
When Adam decided that bounty hunting might be a good way to earn credits, Jym put together a facial-recognition program to search a day’s CW links looking for fugitives or warrant subjects. Since ninety-percent of all links involved video, Jym’s program was remarkably successful at locating Adam’s targets—as long as they made a video link during the monitored day.
After six months as a bounty hunter, Adam success rate was phenomenal, even if the money wasn’t. It seemed those carrying the higher bounties were more cautious with their communications and used cutouts or other methods. So far, the largest reward he’d collected was seventy-five thousand Juirean credits, with the average around thirty-five. Adam needed the Colony Ship’s computers to run his business, and that meant putting up with the high cost of running the station. It was a Catch-22 that had him trapped in a depressing loop of hard work for little gain. But at the moment, it was the only job he could get.
Adam made the link with Aaron Jarvis back on Earth. Aaron had once been a Navy SEAL—just like Adam—and when he left the service ten years ago he earned a Juris Doctorate and opened his own law firm, catering to military personnel, both present and former. Adam knew him from the old days. Now he had the attorney working on his behalf on at least three fronts back on the homeworld.
“Tell me you have some good news,” Adam said when the nearly-bald and rapidly weight-gaining attorney came on the screen. At least someone could afford more than processed bacon and eggs.
Aaron grimaced. “I wish I did, buddy. I just thought I’d give you the latest since we haven’t talked for a couple of weeks.”
“I’ve been out collecting a bounty.”
“A good one?”
“Not really, just subsistence pay. So what do you have?”
“First of all, your bank accounts. As before, everyone is as apologetic as they can be. They all acknowledge that what happened to you sucks, but there’s nothing they can do about it. When your accounts were confiscated, you were a criminal, having stolen the trans-dimensional starship from the military. That was a major crime back then, and the authorities threw the book at you, along with the rest of your team.”
“You’re telling me.”
Aaron shrugged. “They keep coming at me with the simplistic example of a person who robs a bank in order to feed his starving family. It’s still a crime, no matter why you did it. Even though you used the TD-ship to keep the Klin from conquering the galaxy, it was still a crime. Your three million dollars—and everyone else’s money—was absorbed into the system and no one is willing to step up and essentially donate money—their word—to make you whole again.”
“That’s the same thing they said a year ago after the Klin war. So they haven’t budged an inch?”
“I’m afraid not, Adam.”
“What other rays of sunshine do you have for me?”
Aaron glanced at a datapad on his desk. He didn’t need to look up any details on the device; he’d been working on Adam’s case for nearly a year and had everything committed to memory.
“The property tax lien on your Lake Tahoe land was filed properly and all the time periods have elapsed. The redemption period after the foreclosure expired fourteen months ago—”
“About the time Panur and I were captured by Robert McCarthy and the Klin. It’s a little hard to respond to a tax lien notice when you’re locked away on a planet at the edge of the galaxy and about to be executed in a very sadistic manner.”
“I explained that to the taxing authority,” Aaron said. “They sympathize but say there’s nothing they can do to nullify the sale.”
“And the insurance?”
“That I just got a ruling on that.”
Adam’s Lake Tahoe log home had been destroyed several years ago when a team of commandos came looking for the mutant Panur and ran into a force of Klin coming through a trans-dimensional portal the alien had built in Adam’s garage. By the time the battle was over, his house was a pile of ashes. He’d been fighting with the insurance company ever since trying to get them to payout on the replacement policy he carried on the structure.
“They’ve agreed that you are entitled to replacement coverage….”
Adam lit up. At last some good news. “That’s great!”
“However,” his attorney continued, “the insurance company can’t pay to replace a home on land you no longer own. Sorry.”
Adam slumped in his chair. Of course, he thought. That’s par for the course.
“And the hits just keep on coming.”
“One last thing: your military retirement pay. Since the field commission Andy Tobias gave you to captain wasn’t authorized, your retirement pay at that rank has been denied. If anything, going from E-5 to ensign might have worked, but not all the way to captain. Captains need congressional approval—or that of the governing council these days. You never got that. Sorry, Adam, but you’re stuck with half of E-5 pay for your retirement.”
“And E-5 over twelve, not twenty,” Adam pointed out. “E-5s max out at twelve years. Do you know how much it costs to run a Klin Colony Ship? More than an E-5’s retirement pay, I’ll tell you that.”
“I know, Adam, it sucks. Seems no matter how many times you save the galaxy, you still get shafted in the end.” Aaron looked away, embarrassed. “And there’s one more thing.”
“Your fee,” Adam stated.
“Yeah. You know I do pro-bono work, but in your case—and that of the others—it’s taking a lot of time. It’s not just a single issue. Your tab is getting p
retty high, my friend.”
“Give me until the next bounty,” Adam pleaded, “then I’ll start sending you some money.”
“That’s fine. Just something, okay? My wife does the books and she’s really pissed. I can deal with crazed killer aliens on distant worlds, but not a pissed off wife.”
“Roger that, Aaron, I’ll do the best I can.”
“Wish I had better news. I’ll talk to you later. Take care.”
Adam stared at the blank screen for several seconds. How did it come to this? There was a time when he was the most-famous Human in the galaxy, and according to the reaction of Adors Gin, he still was. But all the fame wasn’t paying the bills.
Adam, Riyad and Sherri had once commanded two million dollar appearance fees when the Orion-Cygnus Union was first forming, touring new member worlds to impress the natives with tales of their heroics. Everyone wanted to see and hear the trio, which in reality was mainly Adam Cain. After returning to Earth at the conclusion of the Klin war a year and a half ago—and learning that his life was in ruin—Adam had tried the talk circuit again and ended up speaking at Rotary Clubs and VA centers for pennies. No one was crediting him with the destruction of the Klin. They said the Nuoreans did that when they used a massive gravity beam to destroy the Klin’s new home base on Vesper. The fact that the Nuoreans only did it thinking Adam was on the planet didn’t seem to matter. Now the Klin were gone, the Nuoreans were locked away in the Andromeda galaxy, and the Juireans were back in control of the Expansion. Things were returning to normal and no one wanted to dredge up ancient history.
Adam Cain was an afterthought, a relic from a time most people wanted to forget.
So he returned to the Vesperian star system and recovered the last surviving Klin Colony Ship thinking he could sell it to make some quick money. But since he didn’t legally own the ship there were no buyers. Having no place else to go, Adam and his two alien friends moved in. Arieel then helped get the huge space station to the Formilian system, where now it sat.
But on the bright side, it did have a really nice view of the colorful gas giant Andos.
Adam jumped when the CW screen chirped at him, indicating an incoming link. He saw the identifier as Arieel Bol.
As always, he gasped when the image of the dark-haired alien beauty came on the screen. Arieel was often referred to as the most-beautiful female Prime in the galaxy, and Adam whole-heartily agreed. Long silky black hair reaching to mid-back, full lips and high cheek bones, along with an incredible body of breath-taking proportions, it was also the Formilian’s potent sexual pheromones that made many an alien uneasy when in the presence of Arieel and her people, be they male or female. And the fact that she was over ninety Formilian years old made her stunning sex appeal even more amazing.
“I was informed by Jym that you were injured,” the Formilian said with genuine concern.
“It’s just a scratch, and you know how fast I heal these days.”
“So you are all right?”
“Yes, my dear. I’m just glad to be back. Any chance you could pay me a visit? I have a lot of stress you could help relieve.”
The frown on Arieel gorgeous face gave him concern. “I will try,” she began. “But my link today is not of a welcoming nature.”
“What’s going on?”
“The council is attempting to pass a rule that would allow them to charge you a tax—or a fee, they call it—for remaining in the system.”
“They want to charge me rent…for having the Colony Ship orbiting one of their planets? When has that ever happened before?”
“Never that I know of, especially here,” Arieel replied. “The proposal is meeting resistance, since it would be targeted only to you and could be indefensible if protested. The only way to defeat the protest would be to apply it to all ships in the system. That would cause a revolt. But there are those on the council who hold much animosity towards you. They are now saying it is to recover the fee they spent having the ship brought here in the first place, and with interest. I see it as more of a way to punish you or force you to abandon the ship and leave.”
“Believe me, I’d leave if I could, and take the ship with me. I need it to do my job.”
“I am sorry for the bad news, Adam. I am working on your behalf, but as you know, I do not have much power any longer. If I advocate for you too much, it will only diminish what authority I do have.”
“I understand. Just keep me informed.”
“I must go now. I will try to make it out to you soon, if I can.”
The screen went blank again. Adam leaned back in the chair. In life, there should be a penalty for piling on, just as there is in football, he thought. But there wasn’t. Adam Cain would just have to…he tried to think of a term. About all he could come up with was ‘keep on keeping on.’ It was something his dad used to say, many years ago.
A week later, Adam and the Belsonian alien Kaylor left on another fugitive-recovery hunt. This one was only seven hundred light-years away and was for thirty-eight thousand credits. Although the money wasn’t very good—not in light of the high cost of running his business—Adam had to admit he liked the work. It kept him active and in full display of the advantage most Humans had over the vast majority of aliens in the galaxy.
Humans are from a heavy gravity world, as compared to others. Not only that, but they evolved on their world in a unique way. Most heavy-gravity beings were sluggish, stocky and dumb. Not so Humans. They were quick, strong, coordinated—and most of all—intelligent. This made them super beings, as the various galactic wars and other conflicts they participated in demonstrated. In just a brief time, they rose to the top of the food chain, even ruling the galaxy for a brief time. Now they maintained a small Union of planets in the Orion arm of the galaxy, although their reputation was known throughout the Milky Way.
But the primary reason Adam enjoyed being a bounty hunter was it allowed him to beat up on aliens. Although this sounded xenophobic and cruel, Adam had good reason to feel this way. Twenty years ago, the evil Klin had abducted him—and thousands of other Humans—to help build a secret army to fight their perennial enemy, the Juireans. That plan had gone bust, but what it did do was take Adam away from his wife and young daughter, as well as the job he enjoyed as a Navy SEAL. Then when the Klin’s scheming led to the death of his family, his attitude toward aliens took a decided turn for the worse. Over the years, not much had changed. Although he’d met some aliens he liked and admired—including Kaylor, Jym and Arieel—overall he still didn’t like them very much. Now he was getting paid to bust heads and return bad aliens to face justice, which was right up his alley.
Years ago, Adam had spent time as an alien assassin, doing what he could to earn a living in a strange new reality out among the stars. But that was a lot harder way to make a buck. He had to wait for the assignments to come to him, which was unpredictable. Also, he couldn’t pick and choose his assignments. He worked primarily for a mob boss named Seton Amick, and when the alien said go kill someone, Adam had to obey.
Bounty hunting was different. There were literally millions of rewards being offered at any given time throughout the galaxy and from a thousand different worlds. And he could also take on criminal warrant processing if he wanted. There were large databases where these commissions were listed, and he and his small team would scour them for the highest paying within the closest vicinity to the Colony Ship. Jym would then load the pictures of the various fugitives into the Klin computer and wait for a hit. If any of the thirty-five subjects they could track at a time made a video link, they could pinpoint the planet and location within a square mile. After that it was just a matter of Adam using his super Human abilities to take the bad guys into custody. And the more they resisted arrest, the better.
The only drawback…Adam needed to bring them back alive.
2
“Adam, there is a pair of spacecraft approaching,” Kaylor announced over the station’s intercom system.
; “Identification?” Adam asked as he lay on the bed in his huge stateroom. He’d taken the largest and most opulent accommodations for himself even though it took a few extra credits to keep it lit and heated. It was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself.
“They claim to be from the Incus Federation.”
The IF was located in the Kidis Frontier, one of the up and coming regions of the galaxy now that the yolk of Juirean domination had been thrown off, thanks in part to some of Adam’s past involvement. The Incus were the fourth largest manufacturer of weapons in the galaxy, behind only Maris-Kliss, Xan-fi and Earth. They had been trying to make more of an impact for years.
“What do they want?”
“They wish to speak with you.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
The stateroom was only a short distance to the bridge of the mighty space station. Adam was there a minute later, looking at the face of a black-skinned alien displayed on the huge monitor at the comm station.
“You’re not Incus,” Adam stated. The Incus are worm-like creatures with short legs and short arms. This being was more Humanoid, but with thin gills on the side of his neck that fluttered when he spoke.
“We are Gracilians, members of the Federation and the scientific advisors to the Incus. As you know, they are excellent manufacturers, yet we provide much of the technical knowledge such activities require.”
“What do you want?”
“We have a business proposal for you, Mr. Adam. May we board your vessel?”
“Why didn’t you just call instead of coming all the way over here? That’s normally how these things work.”
The dark eyes of the alien showed no emotion. “Our proposal is rather complicated and requires background. I assure you we are no threat. In addition, we will pay you ten thousand Juirean credits for simply listening to our proposal.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “No obligation?”
“No obligation.”
Adam looked at Jym and Kaylor. They nodded their approval without hesitation.