Chronicles of a Space Mercenary

by Ronald Wintrick

  “Never did like Katon anyway,” I said, “and I brought my bank account with me.” I patted the armrest of my Captain’s chair.

  “You sure know how to wear out your welcome.” Tanya added.

  “I burn my bridges as I go.” I said. It was the story of my life. “As I recall,” I went on, recounting a worn out story, “you had more than worn out your welcome on Teva when I came along and saved your bacon. Something about some missing Crown Jewels! Suspiciously like those you’re wearing around your neck right now!”

  “Allegations.” Tanya replied.

  “Yeah, and you almost dragged me down with you.” I said. “You just couldn’t leave without the goods!”

  “They’re worth more than this crappy ship you set so much store by.” Tanya replied. “A crappy ship we all just risked our lives to save, need I remind you!”

  “That’s really amusing,” I said, “when this crappy ship is the only place you can wear those jewels!”

  “Funny,” Tanya mused, “but I bet the Katons report Last Chance as a stolen ship!” Now she really smiled. An evil smile if I ever saw one, and one that meant she had scored the point. “Plus we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place if you hadn’t lost all your money gambling on the Kievor Trade Station. A fool and his money are soon parted!”

  “We wouldn’t have been in this war in the first place if it hadn’t been for you.” Bren accused. “We nearly lost our lives a dozen times all because of your sure thing on the card table.”

  “They cheated!” I defended myself. It was true; they had to have cheated.

  “Put us in warp space, Bren.” Tanya said disgustedly, playing her advantage to the hilt, as was her wont.

  Bren’s fingers worked over his console board and suddenly space shifted sickeningly around us. I really, truly hated the transfer in or out of warp space. Human bodies weren’t designed for this. Warp space is a completely different dimension. When you transferred in or out of warp space, you felt the transfer right through your body, all the way down into and within the very smallest particles of your body.

  Yet I didn’t like the idea of hanging around and fighting it out with the Katon Destroyer, either. Once again I had scraped us through an impossible situation unscathed, so now was the time to make my curtain call, and get out.

  The Katon Destroyer would not be able to follow us. It was not equipped with the drive necessary to enter or travel through warp space. Only the Katon’s big boats came equipped with warp capability, and the rest, their Destroyers, mine layers, torpedo boats, fighters, scouts and all else rode piggy-back through warp until back in normal space again where their conventional engines would once more find purchase. It wasn’t a good system but one that they thought would save them money in the long run. It hadn’t. I had seen too many of those unequipped ships left behind in battle zones when their transport vessels either left them behind under fire, they couldn’t get docked in time or the Capitol ships hadn’t made it through the battles themselves. It was the latter in most of those cases. Those planets had been fighting for their independence and there was no man who fought harder than the man who was fighting for his home, his family and his freedom. The Katons had shown little regard for those left behind.

  I began gagging dangerously as we pushed into warp, taking much longer than usual because of our slow relative speed. We'd had no choice in the matter with the Katon Destroyer swinging around to get a bearing on us. It was either warp out at our slow velocity or face the Destroyer’s photon cannon while our own was pointed out towards open space. My mouth flooded with saliva and my stomach lurched. Nausea washed through me in a wave that reached from all the way down into my guts and outward and upward, nearly rising into my throat. Goose bumps rose over my entire body.

  I reached to unclasp my safety harness so I could get out of my seat and get to Bren’s station to shut off this hell. The controls for the warp space engine had been deactivated on my own console for just that reason. I would shut it off mid-jump and damned the consequences, not caring where we came out, or even if we did. Suddenly we were through the wall of normal space however, and fully into warp and the terrible sickness was gone. Gone as quickly as it had come, and all that was left to remind me of the horror of it all was the taste of the bile in my mouth and the burning sensation it had left in my throat. I had held it down but only barely. I glared at Tanya;

  “We could have gotten up a little more speed first! We had plenty of time!” I had been watching the Katon Destroyer’s progress as it came around onto us and we had still had plenty of time. I knew that she had ordered the early warp just to make me sick.

  “Screw you.” Tanya replied sweetly. “You’re not risking my neck to save yourself a couple moments of warp sickness. You can shove it right where the sun doesn’t shine!”

  I have always been able to bring out the best in a person. Any person. It’s one of my unimpeachable assets. I smiled at her to let her know she had won no points with me. She smiled back, not the least bit perturbed.

  I unbuckled myself and breathed a sigh of relief, but quietly. No one could know that the great Marc Deveroux had been sick or concerned, not about three lousy Katon Class 4 Destroyers and certainly not about any little old warp jump sickness. Not miscreant Marc, as my loving mother, bless her honest soul, had so unwittingly called me as a child. Marc Deveroux didn’t get worried, because no matter what, Marc Deveroux was going to come out on top!

  I’m an indomitable specimen of mankind. Six foot, two hundred and ten pounds of solid muscle and aged at only about 21 Terra Standards. I had just undergone my first rejuvenation treatment even though I had been, at my thirty-nine calendar years, just as handsome as I had ever been. At least I had thought so.

  “We’ve jumped out of the frying pan,” Bren said, “so where’s the fire?”

  I gave him a murderous look. Coto chittered at him from the ceiling where the battle and jump had seemed to affect it not at all. At least Coto knew and understood it was in good hands with Marc Deveroux at the helm. It was small consolation, however. Coto was, after all, only a bug, albeit a large one. Bren’s mouth snapped shut on whatever else he had been about to say. Hah!

  I stood up and began to stretch the kinks out of my muscles. Battle, however brief, always did that to me, and I’d certainly had the opportunity recently to test that theory thoroughly. The Katons had tried to use us and Last Chance as cannon fodder over and over again, yet somehow we’d come out it if unscathed, so it was triply treacherous that they’d turned on us in the end. Unforgivable.

  We were officially on vacation as far as I was concerned. We had food and supplies for years if we stretched them, all taken on at the beginning of the war, in the mistaken belief that the war might actually drag on that long.

  “Set us a course for the Kievor Trade Station when we exit warp.” I told Bren and took two steps towards the exit hatch when I felt the familiar, sickening sensation of warp transition once more beginning to wash over me, and it came with a lurch that threw me into the bulk-head of the reinforced Bridge hatchway head first.

  My forehead slapped against the plas-steel and stars burst in my head as I crumpled to the deck. I believe I blacked out for a moment, the warp space transition probably having a part in it, because the next thing I knew I was looking up into Tanya’s eyes from the deck where she was bent over me, wiping blood from my eyes and face with a piece of her shirt she had ripped free for that purpose.

  I glanced at the view screens around me. We were back in normal space once again!

  “How far from Katon?” I managed to croak. It felt like I had cracked my head right open.

  “We’re safe enough.” Tanya said. It was true that there were very few ships of any description that would be able to outrun Last Chance. Her huge fusion engine, which had been retrofitted for Last Chance from a huge ore freighter I had found cut to scrap by pirates who had stolen her load of malachite ore (and don’t ask me how they had hauled it all
away) made Last Chance nearly the fastest thing on a fusion plume. What was found floating in space was legally salvage, though of course I had not filed any of the requisite forms, in triplicate, with the local human governing body (who would have tied up the salvage rights for years and who might have blamed me for the crime simply so that they could close the case) but had simply cut it free and run with it to the Kievors.

  The Kievors had been happy for their part to install it for me, in exchange for my old engine and a few credits. In a human dock I would have walked away with surplus credits, but humans couldn’t be trusted like the Kievor. The Kievor were reliable and didn’t ask questions (nor answer them) and charged accordingly when the situation allowed. They always seemed to know just how much they could charge in every given situation. I guess that was what made them such great traders. They could smell a credit’s profit from a parsec’s span.

  Now I’m not saying I’m Joe Innocent, but I had nothing to do with that ore freighters destruction and I swear that on my innocent mother’s soul. That isn’t my style. I’m no murderer. That’s not to say I don’t kill. I’ve been forced to kill more times than I’m willing to count, for my own peace of mind, but with people like the Katons and the pirates who patrol the fringes and every other type of unscrupulous human about (not to mention all the other alien races) a man is forced upon occasion to defend what is his. That’s just how the old Universe turns ‘round. The Kievors may be expensive and unscrupulous bargainers, but once they strike the bargain, you can count on them to live up to it. I trust the Kievors far more than I trust my own kind. Their entire trade empire (and rumor is it spans unimaginable galaxies) is based upon their honesty. Without it they would have no empire.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Warp field failure.” Bren said. “We must have taken a hit near the superconductor array. Only lasted long enough for a short jump and then shorted out. I’ll know more in a bit. You all right?”

  “No.” I said. Bren ignored my comment and stepped over me to exit the Bridge.

  “Hold this.” Tanya ordered me, indicating the swath of material she was now holding on my split open forehead. It didn’t seem to be slowing the flow of blood.

  I took the already sopping rag and continued to hold it down on the wound. I could feel the blood flowing between my fingers. Scalp wounds always bled a lot. You didn’t think so much blood flowed in such a constricted area, or could spill from such minor wounds, but it felt like I was losing gallons. Tanya moved over to Bren’s Station to check long range scan and I took the opportunity to sit up.

  “Holy mother of God!” Tanya yelled, causing a piercing spike to lance through my head as her voice seemed to hit the exact place where I was hurting. My heart rate increased and new blood poured from my lacerated head.

  “What now?” I asked, but not really wanting to know.

  “Katon Battleship just came out of warp.” She told me what I didn’t want to know. “Fifty two thousand clicks and closing.” She hit the intercom; “Back to your guns, children! Report!”

  “Reporting.” Melanie said.

  “What’s happening?” Manuel asked.

  “Katon Battleship is what!” Janice answered him. As a rear gunner she would have the Katons on her screen, little good it would do her at this distance. Little good it would do her at any distance, with her puny plasma cannon. We were in deep trouble and well I understood it.

  Last Chance was still under full burn, running flat out on her long trail of fusion reaction energy, the auto pilot under the impression we were yet in warp space, where, though there is no friction in the sense of normal matter, there is an inhibition of forward momentum as the Universe tried to squeeze you back out into normal space. It was gravity and gravitational waves. Though humans had learned to manipulate gravity now, it was only in small ways, and we had not even learned to detect or measure it. How gravity could exist in the emptiness of space without visible mass to explain its existence was still a hotly debated question and one I did not bother trying to understand, though Bren was often trying to explain it to me. Universal Force, he called it. It was enough for me to know that it existed and that it was what held everything together. More I did not need to know.

  So we were running flat out as fast as Last Chance could push us and there was nothing else to be done for the moment. I needed the time to think. That was a certainty.

  “We have a lead on them,” Tanya told me as I struggled to my feet, “but that won’t last long. They came out of warp sooner than we, probably thinking we were doubling back to confuse our trail. We’re lucky we weren’t doing just that. They’d have had us cold. We need to get into warp again. We can’t outrun them.”

  That was the truth and the whole case in a nutshell. Last Chance could outrun most anything holding back vacuum but by no means could she outrun a Katon Battleship. A Battleship was little more than fusion reactors, engines and guns. A Battleship was the only thing, nearly, which could catch us, and somehow our luck had run out. Try as I might I could envision no way out of this mess I had once again gotten myself into. If it wasn’t one thing, it was always another.

  “There has to be another answer.” I said. “We can’t hide from them in warp any more than we can hide from them in normal space. There has to be something else.”

  “David should have seen them on warp scan!” Tanya swore. “They had us on their scan!”

  “Now they’re doing things right.” I swore myself. You just had to see the humor in things sometimes, if you wanted to keep your sanity in an insane world.

  “I hope you have a plan, Captain.” Tanya said sarcastically, so that I reacted.

  “Of course I have a plan!” I snapped back.

  Of course I didn’t. Tanya could always bring out the worst in me. She’s talented that way.

  “Of course I don’t have any damn plan.” I amended. Now wasn’t the time for childishness. “If you happen to have any bright ideas now would be a good time to mention them.”

  “Captain.?” Bren’s voice came over intercom.

  “He can hear you.” Tanya said after activating the link, but did I want to hear.

  “The warp array and sensor dish took a hit.” Bren said from the nose of Last Chance where he was inspecting the gear. “I don’t think the damage is too severe but I can’t get the circuit to stay open.” The warp array is a super conducting mesh of Trinium filament covering the nose of Last Chance and, when electrified, creates electrical mass and thus the gravity needed to bend and warp space and allow us to enter, travel through, the curved walls of normal space, bypassing great extents of distance. In theory, the Universe is a much smaller place than it seems, but because of the curvature of space seems far vaster than it really is. It is vast, just not as large as it seems upon first glance.

  I moved over to stand beside my Captain’s chair and thumbed the switch on the armrest control panel to lock open the communication’s channel; “Well? How long is it going to take you to fix it?” I demanded.

  “Under battle conditions?” Bren demanded, but didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s not going to get fixed under battle conditions. Otherwise, an hour or two.”

  “Get outside and fix it!” Tanya ordered, but Bren's only response was to laugh.

  “There’s nothing you can threaten me with that will get me to do it. It’s certain death to attempt it under acceleration. You’re not leaving me behind in space.”

  “We need to find a place to hide.” I said, interrupting them before a full blown argument got underway. It wouldn’t help a thing and I wasn’t in the temperament to put up with it at this time. I admit that it was mostly my fault the way we have learned to deal with one another, but when you live the stressful lives we do it takes a bit of insanity sometimes to bear the reality. Our reality was often quite unbearable. Our present circumstances were a prime example. We seemed always to be in such predicaments. I admitted blame in that department, as well. It was usually always my fault
, maybe how I had gotten so good at getting out of such situations.

  “You’re just now figuring this out!” Tanya said crossly, having failed to get Bren to do her bidding and taking it out on me, not that I would have allowed it. We really could not do without Bren. Who else with his credentials would agree to crew on a ship like this, and without a Bren aboard to keep the old scrap heap up and running we’d soon find ourselves on a long journey to nowhere with no power or some other essential system, like life support or gravity or, well, you get the idea.

  Tanya didn’t bother to look up from the long range scanner she was studying as she berated me and I didn’t respond. Like I said, this wasn’t the time for it and despite how it grated me to let her have the last word somehow I just kept my mouth shut. We were really in bad trouble this time. Tanya looked up at me with an acknowledgment of my pass, then quickly bent back to her task.

  The Battleship massed many thousands of tons more than we did and on a dead stop start would respond sluggishly compared to Last Chance, but on a flat out run in open space the Battleship’s massive engines would soon have her upon us and no two ways about it. We had to find a place to hole up and I mean we had to find it yesterday.

  I sat down in my Captain’s chair, getting my blood all over it but not really caring, as Bren came back on the Bridge and went over to stand beside Tanya. She ignored him as he looked over her shoulder, also studying the long range scanner.

  Bren’s a complete geek. I think everyone knows the type. He is as different to me as day is to night. He is the last person anyone in their right mind would count on to get them out of a situation like this. The only thing he had ever attacked in his whole life was computer viruses and gallons of ice cream but I was counting on him. I knew he could do it.

  “We’re finished.” Bren pronounced after only a moment studying the scanner.

  Tanya turned a look upon Bren that would have shriveled a bull elephant if any such Earth creature still existed. None did. Earth was a ball of plas-steel and concrete teeming with mad human multitudes bent upon pointless existences mostly reminiscent of cattle at the feed trough. Deadly place.