The Last Child

by Troy Osgood

  THE LAST CHILD

  An Arek Lancer Story

  By

  Troy Osgood

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  From The Author

  Other Books by

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  “That’s it?”

  The Pierd in front of me just mumbled something in it’s language, which I didn’t speak. It sounded like rocks grinding against other rocks, long sentences made with lots of short words. It, I can never tell the Pierd sexes apart, stood four feet high and two feet wide. Short and stocky. All covered in brown fur with a head like a block. Flat nose, beady eyes.

  They were shrewd traders and this one was trying to cheat me.

  It held out a credchip good for one thousand creds. Not close to what I was owed for this job.

  The cargo itself wasn’t a big deal. Relatively small. It was the delivery location. CU145792 was a large asteroid in the Callic Cluster. This was Deep Space. The outskirts. As far out as you could get and still be in the known galaxy.

  My territory.

  The place didn’t even have a real name. Part of an asteroid belt that orbited a dead planet called Untun, CU145792 had been hollowed out and mined by the Culkin Union. Not a friendly or welcoming place but it still needed goods to survive. The problem being that it was so far out of the way that the larger shipping concerns didn’t want to waste the fuel needed to get there. That’s where freighters like mine came into the picture.

  Trips like this were barely profitable for me. As long as I got paid.

  “Give me the full amount or you don’t get your cargo,” I growled at the Pierd.

  It’s name was Yunil and it ran one of the local general goods stores. The asteroid was home to miners, miners and more miners. Along with the services and people that supported them. The Culkin Union was a Pierd group, so beings like Yunil were in charge of everything on the rock.

  Yunil yelled at me some more. I’m sure it translated to “cheater”, “scammer” and so on. It ended with what was likely “I already have the cargo” and the Pierd gave me what I assumed was a smirk, thinking he had the upper hand.

  I leaned in close, giving it the look.

  I’m six foot, two hundred. Black hair and beard, with streaks of gray. Brown eyes. Ruggedly handsome, so I’ve been told. Not the most intimidating at first glance, there are many bigger, but I’ve worked hard on ‘the look’ and it gets results.

  The Pierd took a step back, even though it weighed as much as I did, things still get intimidated by those bigger leaning over them. Yunil glanced around the lobby to its shop, especially at the transaction window and the office behind the blastproof polycarbonite window. Yunil had wanted to stay back there to conduct our business, the circuitry of the window would have translated it’s words to Tradelan, Terran or some other language I could understand. But it would have been behind the protection of the carbonite. I made it come out here.

  I’m not stupid.

  “I’ll take back the cargo, sell to your competitor and break some stuff on my way out.”

  Most of that was a bluff. I knew it, Yunil knew it. First there was no competition on the rock. Yunil’s shop was it. I could take the cargo back to more populated areas of space, but that would cost me fuel and the job would be a major loss. Second, if I was to break stuff, the Culkin Union would have me arrested or fined. Neither of which was good for me. Yunil looked up at me, studying and thinking. How much was a bluff and how far was I willing to go?

  The Pierd made a noise that I assumed was a sigh because it handed over another credchip. Good for another thousand credits and paying me what I was owed. Yunil had figured it wasn’t worth the hassle of calling my bluff.

  Which I knew he would have.

  Yunil isn’t a bad sort. We’d done business before but times were getting rough on the asteroid and he was trying to save every cred he could. Can’t blame it. Times were tough everywhere.

  “Thanks,” I said biting back a sarcastic remark.

  Which was hard for me. Sarcasm came naturally.

  But no need to annoy one of my regulars.

  I needed the work Yunil offered.

  With a last huff, Yunil turned its blocky body around and headed for the door. The Pierd’s people had unloaded the cargo from my ship when I had first arrived and it was probably already lost within all the supplies the shop carried. The door slid open into the metal wall and Yunil disappeared.

  I turned, pocketing the credchips, and walked out the shop’s lobby. The asteroid was a backwater, no automatic scanning of cargo and deposits like at some of the bigger stations. Still did transfers the old fashioned way. I tended to like that more. Personal. Got to look the being in the face and eyes. If they had eyes.

  Like most Pierd establishments, there was an empty lobby with a display board that would list the shop’s wares. You’d order from the board, under the watchful eye of the shop owner behind the window, and one of the employees would bring your order to you. Larger orders would be picked up out back. Efficient with minimal interaction.

  Just as the Pierd liked it.

  The shop’s door slid quietly shut behind me and I was out on the street.

  Being an asteroid, everything was carved out of the interior. So the gray stone surrounded everything. Only about twenty feet high, the cavern was carved like a ring through the stone with shops on both sides. About three miles long in total, it was very busy. The workers and homes were in side caverns, the entrances scattered around the oval. The hanger was another tunnel, midway around the north side of the ring.

  The city, for lack of a better word, was called The Oval. Not very imaginative but it did the job.

  It was dark and crowded. What little light there was came from the shops and glow lamps hanging from the ceiling. The smell of dozens of aliens of all species mixed in the refreshed air from the circulators mounted in the cavern roof. Beings moved in both directions, pushing against each other, not caring. Most were dirty, miners off their shift. No one looked wealthy. There was an air of resignation everywhere, people given up on life.

  Not a fun place.

  Not that I blamed them. If I was stuck inside an asteroid that didn’t even rate a true name, I’d be pretty depressed too. I couldn’t wait to get off this rock.

  Just needed to find a job first.

  *****

  The life of a freighter is not glamorous. Not by any means. Don’t let the books and vids fool you. They like to make it seem better than it is. The daring swashbuckler off on another adventure.

  Tired of your mundane life stuck on your backwater world? Become a freighter and see the universe. Visit exotic locations. See all that the galaxy has to offer.

  Sounds like the same pitch used to get people to sign up for the Expeditionary Forces.

  Sadly, it works. For both.

  Sure, some haulers get the good runs. Get to see the inner core worlds. Visit the good places. But those are the ones that sign up with the big interplanetary outfits. The others, the independents, like myself, we get stuck with running small hauls out to worlds and asteroids like this rock.

  Nothing glamorous about CU145792.

  The void of warpspace gives a solo pilot plenty of time to spend on contemplation. So I have lots of opportunities to reflect on my life and the choices that got me here. It’s not just the time in warpspace either. Sitting in dingy and rathole bars while
waiting for a job offer gives that same kind of time.

  Dingy and rathole bars like this one.

  It didn’t even have a name, just a sign over the door written in Tradelan that said ‘bar’.

  The room was large and square. No windows, just the door. The bar counter was along the back wall, lots of stools that could adjust in height to accommodate various sized beings, and built out of solid rock. Nothing fancy, got the job done. Tables filled the rest of the space. No organization, just as many tables as would fit. Some were broken with cracks and even missing pieces. There wasn’t enough chairs for every table, so some beings had to stand along the edges.

  I’d taken a chair at a small table in the corner where I could watch the door as well as the vidscreen mounted to the wall. It was behind a sheet of somewhat clear blastproof polycarbonite which made the picture a little fuzzy but still watchable.

  Wonder who has the contract for bringing polycarbonite here? They use a lot of it.

  The vidscreen was showing some news from the inner core but it was on a station controlled by the Culkin Union so it was filtered but still broadcast in Tradelan, the common language of the galaxy. Filtered a lot. So is every station, everywhere. There are so many Unions, planetary governments, the Planetary Council and others controlling the news that you never get an unbiased report. But if you know how to read between the lines you can get a pretty good idea of the truth.

  See all the galaxy has to offer.

  Sighing, I took another swig of my ale. Technically it was not ale, not by the earth definition. But it was close to it, one of the closest I’d found. Some drink called gaurt from a planet called Uduy.

  I kept one eye on the vid and one on the door, and I waited.

  As an independent freighter, I take a job to one place and when I leave that place it means I usually need to leave with a job. That sends me to my next destination. That’s life. One planet, moon or asteroid, hop to another.

  The problem with a rock like this one is finding a job when I leave.

  The asteroid needs a lot of stuff but not a lot of stuff leaves. Ore, sure, lots of that. But the Union controls that. A guy like me needs to find something else.

  CU145792 is so out of the way that it doesn’t even have a jobs board like the Inner Core worlds do. A centralized location where people looking to ship have a place to post what they need and people looking to do the shipping can find them. In some Inner Core worlds, the shipper never even meets the shippee and it’s handled through a third party.

  The bartender, who doubled as the server in this place, a big lump of a Kern, had just dropped off my second glass when I saw my contact enter. He looked around the place with an air of disdain. Quickly finding me, he started making his way through the crowd. Tesk Un Lil was a Kry from the planet Kryot in the star system of the same name. One of the Inner Core systems. He’d done something to anger his superiors so had been banished here to the dredges of the galaxy. He represented the Kry on other worlds and rocks in the local area of Deep Space. We ran into each other a lot.

  Lil had light brown skin, bright red eyes and perfectly combed and cut black hair. He wore expensive looking clothes. He worked hard to present an image, that of an Inner World businessman. Someone important.

  He really wasn’t. He knew it. I knew it. Everyone here knew it.

  Stopping at my table he looked down at the empty chair with a sigh. It was a dirty chair and Lil was in his full snob mode. He sat down, back straight and hands held above the table as if he didn’t want to touch it. He was laying it on pretty thick.

  “Arek Lancer,” he said in near perfect Tradelan, not a hint of a Kryan accent. I mean the guy spoke it better than I did and it was my primary language. It was rare that I spoke english nowadays. “How are you?”

  “Doing good,” I replied and pointed at my mug, offering him one. He shook his head and I held up one finger for the Kern to see. “You?”

  “Business is looking up,” he replied finally settling his hands on the table. He pulled out a cloth first and wiped off a section, looking down at the surface with disgust. He held the cloth away from himself and shook it before disdainfully putting it back in his pocket.

  He was lying. Business was not looking up.

  Tesk Un Lil wanted back into the Inner Core. Badly. He constantly worked to get there, going after bigger and bigger deals to try to convince his people that he deserved to be in the Core. He was still stuck here, which meant business was just the same as it always was.

  That was the big problem with Deep Space. Once you were stuck here, it was very hard to get out.

  “You called me so I assume that means you are looking for work?” Lil asked. More of a statement than a question.

  “That’s right. Just dropped off a shipment for Yunil. Need a shipment to head back out with.”

  Lil leaned back but without actually touching the chair. He tapped his long fingers on the table. The Kern bartender brought my drink and dropped it on the table, spilling some of it. Without a word he took the empty, not even bothering to clean up the spill or apologize. I leaned back, actually touching the chair, and waited for Lil.

  The Kry had excellent memories. Their minds were almost like computers. They could process a lot of information quickly and were very good at multitasking. They rarely had to write anything down or input it in a computer. This meant they rarely forgot anything.

  Another reason Lil was having such a hard time getting back to the Core.

  Right now he was going through all the various deals he had in place, what needed to go where and when. He was also factoring in which ones didn’t accept cargo from Terrans.

  Yeah, fancy that, we’re not that well liked out here or anywhere in the galaxy for that matter.

  I took a drink and watched the vidscreen well waiting on Lil.

  “I have a couple crates that need to go to Dynuit,” he said finally. “No rush.”

  Picturing the trip from here to there in my head I worked out the fuel calculations and the time factor.

  “How much,” I asked knowing what the minimum would need to be.

  “2,500 cred.”

  “That’ll work,” I said holding out my hand. Minimum and a little bit extra.

  I wanted to laugh as Lil awkwardly reached out and clasped mine. His face was priceless. Kry don’t like to touch or be touched, and Lil was worse than most of them. I made him shake my hand on every job we did. I thought it was funny. I doubt he did.

  It’s the little things that make life fun.

  *****

  By the time I left the bar it was well past dark. Or would have been if the sun was visible inside this rock. Instead I knew it was late by the type of people that were out. Every planet is the same. Night comes and a different class of being comes with it.

  CU145792 was no different. It’s surprising, but even on a rock this small with a tightly controlled workforce, there were still criminal gangs. Maybe not that surprising really.

  As I made my way through the street and around the clusters of people, I kept a hand on my gun. I wore a low hanging holster on my right leg. It was strapped to the leg and my belt, a holdover from my old army days. As was the blaster itself. Hand on gun and the general “don’t mess with me” vibe I gave off kept people away from me.

  I wouldn’t be able to leave the rock for a couple hours or even load Lil’s cargo until morning, or what counted as morning, so I had some time to kill. Time was relative. Each planet or system had its own day and night cycle. Could play havoc on a traveler as they always had to adapt to local time. Or they did what most of us pilots did, kept their own cycle. In other words, they kept odd hours.

  There’s wasn’t much to do on the asteroid but I knew I could find a card game or something along those lines if I wanted to.

  But I didn’t.

  What I really wanted was to sleep.

  Well I really did want to play cards, but money was tight and I didn’t have any to risk.

&nbs
p; So sleep it was.

  I was near the tunnel that led to the hangers when I heard the commotion behind me.

  Turning, hand around the grip of my blaster, a military issued Sig Sauer T1700, I saw people being pushed aside. Something or someone running through them. I could see two tall figures near the back, coming closer, the ones pushing people out of the way by force or just their presence. I couldn’t see anything they could be chasing.

  And then I felt something slam into me.

  Something small, a foot or more shorter than me and much thinner, hit me. I almost fell but was able to keep my balance. It hadn’t hit hard but had momentum behind it. So short I had missed it when looking at the crowd.

  I looked down at what hit me.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  It was a she.

  A young girl.

  A Thesan and she looked scared.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I looked down at her and she up at me with big eyes that were on the verge of tears.

  She wasn’t just scared, she was terrified, reaching out and holding onto my jacket. She looked over her shoulder at the two tall forms that were continuing to push their way through the gathering crowd, coming closer. People were coming out of shops and buildings to see what the commotion was.

  I didn’t need this. I had stuff to do and places to be. It wasn’t my business.

  “Dammit,” I said aloud as the girl looked up at me.

  Thesan, they’re allies of us earth folks. Terrans is what the other races call us. From Terra, which is what they call earth. Thesans are one of the few allies we truly have out here.

  And the girl was alone.

  And young.

  She was typical for her race and age. I placed her at mid teens, maybe on the low end. She was about five feet tall with gray and black fur. Thesans are covered with a light fur from head to toe, tufts at the wrists and ankles, and hair that goes down their back and connected to their bodies. Their ears are small and pointed and their eyes are bright yellow with green irises. She wore a nondescript set of worker’s coveralls that were too big. Probably meant to hide her form. Thesans tended to stand out. It was the long tail.