Chronicles of a Space Mercenary

by Ronald Wintrick

  “I wouldn’t want to be aboard that Katon Battleship just right now.” Manuel said over com. “I don’t think those photon cannons are going to be able to do much on that meteor field.” The Katon Battleship had not even been equipped with plasma cannon. Plasma cannon were nearly useless in a battle between two such Capitol Class ships and now they were feeling that loss. They had nothing with which to clear themselves a path, as we were doing.

  “Do you have time to put us back on top of that Battleship?” I asked Bren. “There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to cut our own way through, but if we follow them I think we can be assured of a clear path.” Bren did a couple quick calculations and then nodded to me in the affirmative. I threw caution to the wind and pulled Last Chance out of her trajectory and fought her towards the now far distant Katons. It was a race I wasn’t sure we were going to win before it was over but quickly enough we were following the huge ship down into the micro-meteor field and soon after knew what the Katons had been planning.

  The Universe turned a brilliant yellow ahead of us. Out ahead of the Katon Battleship. Our screens went dark momentarily and we now knew what the Katons had planned. “Nukes.” Tanya said. “Looks like the Katons are going to make it after all!”

  “Which means they’ll still be around to give us their attention on the other side of the meteor field.” Bren added unnecessarily. More explosions darkened our screens as the Katons continued to blast a path for them, and coincidentally, us as well. We followed them into the tunnel they had created but I was feeling no gratitude for the lives they had given us.

  “They’ve cleared a path completely through the meteor field!” Bren yelled excitedly. “We’re home free!”

  “Not exactly.” I said, but I was acting to change that. I cut deceleration and spun us with our attitudinal thrusters. The only thing that changed was the direction we were facing. We still raced down the tunnel the Katons had so obligingly created for us except that now we were facing them nose on. “Fire!” I yelled at Tanya.

  She had already done so. The pencil thin seeming photon beam sliced out and pinned the distant Katon Battleship like a bug on a display board. At this distance the Katon ship seemed no more than bug size but there was no forgetting that only moments ago it had been trying to kill us and would return to attempting to do so now that the present crisis had been averted. While the photon beam had them pinned and before it timed out I again hit the attitudinal thrusters and spun Last Chance just the slightest.

  If there had been no obvious results from the initial attack there were noticeable results now. Altering our attitude while the photon beam had them pinned turned what would have been a mere pin-hole hulling through their ship into a gash that nearly cut them in half. Instantaneous explosions marched throughout the Katon Battleship and then suddenly her fusion reactor went and our screens once more went black.

  I didn’t have time to marvel on our success. Using the nav screen to see what I was doing in a world of visual blankness I turned Last Chance once more upon her tail and hit the thruster. There would be no repercussion from the explosion of the Katon Battleship at this distance but there was certain to be debris. We could only hope that the fusion flame would burn it up before it could strike us. The screens came back alive as I got us reoriented and we continued to rush backwards down the tunnel the late Katons had provided us. There was little to see standing on our fusion flame the way we were and it was a tense next few minutes as we envisioned rushing down on massive chunks of flying armor and bulkheads and all else loosed by the fusion explosion of the Katon’s reactor. Somehow we survived the moment and the Universe returned to a semblance of normality, other than the micro-meteor field rushing by beyond our hull.

  “I think we’ve really gone and done it this time.” Bren said. “The Katons will never stop hunting us now. Not ever!”

  CHAPTER 2

  I thought the Katons would be too busy to be wasting more men and ships hunting us. It had not been profitable for them so far and I thought that they should have learned their lesson by now and would just let us be. They had reconstruction and debt and all else that came to the losing side in a war. They would be utterly foolish to prosecute this matter further. Or anyway so I thought.

  The War of Succession had not gotten as bloody as many of man's previous conflicts. Men of enlightenment had seen the futility of further bloodshed and had put an end to it before it reached the surfaces of the Federation planets themselves. Only a foolish government would continue hostilities once the battle for dominance of space had been lost. The devastation the radioactive photon beam created within a world’s atmosphere was not a pretty picture. The destruction could be horrific. In this case it was the governments of the rebel planets themselves who decided not to further press on with their attacks, though if anyone had the moral right to do so, I thought it was they. All they had wanted was sovereignty of their own worlds, not conquest or control of other worlds not their own. When the Federation forces retreated the rebel secessionists let them go. I wasn’t entirely sure it was the right decision. There was no guaranteeing the Federation planets might not rise once again with their dreams of Empire. Possibly why the Katons had wanted Last Chance so badly, already thinking of new campaigns.

  Last Chance had originally been a multi-billionaire politician’s private luxury yacht. It had been very well armed for its class but pirates are always a concern and can be a deadly nuisance. I had stumbled upon some damning video surveillance of the individual in question (without repeating names, I am a man of my word) in a very sordid type of circumstance and the individual had found Last Chance a small price to pay for my silence. Blackmailing the rich and ruthless can be a dangerous occupation and I have always believed since that I got out of it just in time. I’ve made many enemies since, I seem to have the knack for pissing off powerful people, but now that I am the Captain of my own ship, it has become just a trifle more difficult for those who would like to kill me to make those wishes a reality.

  I named my ship Last Chance because she was the politician’s last chance to make good. The politician had tried to have me killed first rather than pay me off but I had been in that line of work long enough to expect just such reactions and the killers the politician sent had found their noose round their own necks. They I gave no mercy. The politician only escaped because he could pay. I make it a point to avoid the galaxies where this certain politician holds sway, though I still have copies of the data disks I used to blackmail him in the first place. One can never be too sure, can one.

  Six is considered a skeleton crew, but we are a very comfortable skeleton crew, if I say so myself. I do have to pay them wages, after all, and I am not a wealthy man. I have always believed in making do with what it was possible to make do with, even though that often entailed a great deal more work for the rest of us. Despite what I might sound like I am not a shirker. I am not afraid to work. It’s just that where I came from there was very little opportunity for people like me. If you had not come from a position of money and influence, there were few avenues open to attain those pinnacles. Everything was done to keep you in your place, within your caste.

  Tanya had come from similar circumstances though that alone was not enough for us to see eye to eye. We would never agree on much. She was a vicious, emotionless animal who did not consider others when she made her decisions. She had been born on the frontier world Marvo in one of the worst ghettos man had ever engendered yet had somehow thrived when most around her withered and perished. A society that crushed hardened men to whimpering insanity had seen her rise from the morass like an omnipotent goddess. Much else about her I did not know, because it was ‘none of my business’, except her age, which was public knowledge and that she had no criminal history that had ever reached the court system. Yet one look into her hard eyes and you knew there was a great deal to Tanya that was not visible upon the surface of her being. That within her soul she carried the scars from wounds garnered in the foulest p
its of man’s domiciles. At the same time, there was no one I trusted more with my life than I trusted her. Like me, when she gave her word, it was the principle of the matter which mattered. Having given her word to a thing, no matter who you were, you could count on her to honor it to the letter. She had saved my life more times than I cared to count. We might be unable to find common sympathies, but when the chips hit the table, there was no one I would want more beside me than my Tanya.

  So we were quite comfortable with only the six of us, and that after I had turned the whole lower deck into a cargo hold. Last Chance was a working girl now. A working girl with a gym, sauna, real showers, large suites rather than berths, recreation areas, a small theater (which Bren had supplied with every movie ever made, commandeered from some unsuspecting vendors not fully protected server), her galley with real appliances (where real food could be cooked; space rations could grow very old very quickly) and all of her other non-essential fittings you would not find in most ships, where economy of space came first and luxuries a far second. We’re a flying palace, at least taking into account where most of us came from, yet within several weeks of escaping the Katons, I was nearly out of my mind with boredom once again and needing release for my built up tensions.

  Last Chance could run herself under most normal circumstances, like those we found ourselves in now. We were in the vastness of interstellar space and there was little to nothing which could or would detect us here. Last Chance could handle any circumstance herself which might arise here, from making emergency course alterations to activating escape measures should the need ever arise. She was programmed to run from everything on auto-pilot, even as far as to escape into warp drive if conventional escape proved ineffective, the mechanism for which Bren had long since repaired. All unless I didn’t want to escape. I have cut up and salvaged more than a few pirates who underestimated Last Chance’s ability to put up a fight. I shed no tears over them. They had gotten what they deserved.

  “You’ve changed our course!” Bren accused me when I entered the main lounge after having done just exactly what he was accusing me of. I looked at him with surprise, because I had not meant that my course alteration should be detected. I had programmed a very gradual change and no one should have noticed it. Last Chance’s environmental gravity control system, like the warp field, created a particle field within the deck so dense it actually simulates mass. This dense particle field in turn creates the gravity we need to live and move about as if we were on an actual body of mass, like a planet or heavy moon. In a sense the gravity is simulated because it can be turned on and off, but no physical laws are changed or altered to make it work. The particle field, when on, has an actual measurable mass, thus naturally creating the gravity that kept us stuck to the decks, but it was malleable in that we could manipulate it for our own needs. Ship’s environmental gravity was supposed to compensate for all exterior inertia, lateral forces and anything else that could affect us inside her, but obviously had not. Not if Bren had noticed it, minute as the motion had been.

  I looked around at those present guiltily, though why I should feel guilt at having decided where my own ship should go next I cannot say. Probably because I knew how they would react.

  “So what new surprises do you have in store for us, Captain?” Tanya asked, the sly emphasis on the word Captain.

  Coto chose that moment to scurry into the lounge after me. Coto followed me wherever I went. Coto’s presence gave me a moment to gather my wits from the surprise of being caught as everyone’s eyes turned to follow its movements. It moved over to the corner and then climbed the glass smooth plas-steel wall as if there were an invisible ladder there only it could see. It climbed to the ceiling and rested there at the juncture of wall and ceiling. Everyone’s eyes followed it but Tanya’s, I amended with some inner humor. Her eyes never left my own. She was waiting for me to answer her question.

  “Unload the cargo.” I answered her as if it should have been obvious. It had been obvious, but she had just wanted to see me squirm. I refused to do such a thing. The load of Trinium ore we were carrying in our hold had been my payment for enlisting with the Katons in that ill-fated conflict. Though it wasn’t any great fortune, we couldn’t refill the holds while it rested therein, taking up potentially valuable space. Of course the real reason was that I wanted to get out. To get out of Last Chance and carouse. To see new faces. I was beginning to go stir crazy languishing about with no discernible purpose. I needed something to do!

  I have a strict rule about fraternizing with my crew. I will not do it. It does not work. I have learned this the hard way. As the Captain of my own ship it is often quite easy to seduce the women crewing for me, they will sometimes practically throw themselves on me, but when the relationship ends and a return to the status of crew and Captain is demanded, and I have to trust these crew mates with my life, I found that I no longer could. I generally do not leave relationships on good standing with the one I leave, and then to have to trust that person later with my life . . . ! It proves most difficult to do. Most difficult. So I have my rule and as much as it sometimes pains me to do so, I abide by it.

  I was sure I had been getting mixed signals from Tanya, as if the idea of sexual relations with me were repulsive to her in the extreme, but that her body were following its own agenda and traitorously wanting me. Tanya is by far the sexiest woman I have ever met, yet she is also absolutely the last woman I would ever allow myself to sleep with. That part of it would be heavenly, no doubt, but the analogy of the black widow spider, where the female kills and devours the male afterward, would never allow me to get that close to her without a weapon in my hand, and I do not think she would appreciate that in the heat of a romantic embrace. I also know myself and what a low life bastard I can be. I would not want to anger Tanya in that way, for reasons of physical health; I would not maintain my health much longer after angering her in that way. Tanya grinned at me now as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I thought she could read minds, so completely cognizant of all that went on around her. I gave her an evil look.

  “So where are we going?” Manuel asked. Manuel Terrara was physically the oldest among the crew. He was forty-nine in both actual as well as physical years. He had refused rejuvenation treatment because he did not believe it was God’s will. That it was a mortal sin to tamper with God’s work. If God had wanted us to live forever, went the train of thought, He would have created us thus in the first. There were a growing number of people who felt thus and I did not criticize him for his belief, for though Manuel was a pious man, he could also be a ferocious one. “God never said that you could not defend yourself,” he would say, and so far I had done nothing so sinful as to make him leave me. We never had to hunt out trouble. It seemed to find us all of its own volition. If we salvaged afterward, then those were the spoils of victory and not to be gainsaid Manuel was a good man to have on your side in any kind of fight and that he had God on his side did not seem to hurt things either.

  Brown skinned like much of the human race, Manuel was a mix of nearly all of the original races of men. He was balding now and running to softness, but with a regal, self-conscious bearing indicating a confidence that you couldn’t help but to trust. He and Janice Ortiz were lovers.

  Janice is thirty-one but wearing the body of a nineteen year old. Though also religious she had had no compulsions about rejuvenation. She was of a similar stock as Manuel, a bit lighter and with straight black hair as compared to Manuel's tight curls. I had recruited them as a couple ten years previously on the world New Madrid and their relationship had withstood all those years, but I was not so sure how much longer it would last, with Manuel’s belief concerning rejuvenation. He would continue to age while with repeated rejuvenations, Janice would not. I wondered how Manuel’s religious beliefs could weather such a storm. I did not see how he would be able to keep them.

  Melanie Vang was of Asian descent. I knew almost nothing about her, less than I knew about
Tanya, if that were possible. The numerous Red Chinese (who controlled over a hundred worlds) did not share data with the rest of mankind. When I plugged her name, prints, retinal scans or DNA into the Multi-Net search engine, I got absolutely nothing back on her. Not a thing. As if she did not exist.

  I didn’t place a lot of stock in a person’s Multi-Net credentials, however. I was a face value type interviewer when considering applicants for berth aboard my ship. I think face value is the only kind of value which has any true merit. Data can be faked, or for instance in Melanie’s case, there may be no data. Melanie’s credentials had been impeccable, anyway. I had watched her butcher her owner with a piece of scrap steel she’d produced from the folds of the rags she had been wearing when her owner had tried to give her to a lizard to cover a gambling debt that he could not or did not wish to pay in credits. I think her reaction had a great deal to do with the fact that the lizard openly admitted during the transaction that it had never tried human and was genuinely looking forward to the culinary experiment. I blew the lizard’s head off afterward when it tried to take possession of Melanie anyway, and she had been a faithful member of Last Chance’s crew since. Four and a half years now.

  We had received rejuvenation treatment from the Katons as part of our payment for services to be rendered (all but Manuel) before the hostilities had begun. Melanie had gone from a still attractive middle aged woman to a stunning, porcelain skinned beauty you wouldn’t expect to find anywhere outside of your dreams. I had found myself intensely attracted to her and had to remind myself of my rule before I made a precipitous and rash act. It had not helped that she noticed the interest I was not able to hide and made it clear that she would be mine for the asking, despite her on again, off again relationship with David Bren. In a way she scared me more than Tanya, even. At least with Tanya I understood her motivations, but Melanie was as incomprehensible to me as the deepest, darkest depths of space. I could not fathom her at all.