Last Chance does have an identification beacon which by human law is supposed to remain on at all times. The beacon is not supposed to be disabled, of course, but the first thing I had done after acquiring Last Chance was to have an electronics expert do just that. He had installed a switch that defied the best investigators ability to detect, yet allowed me to turn off the beacon at will. When you do questionable things for a living an identification beacon can be very bad for business, and for your survival.
“Looking for old friends?” Tanya asked knowingly.
“No, just new ones. I’m a sociable person.” I replied.
“Lots of Mudok ships, I see.” Tanya said smugly. The Mudoks were clannish. They never turned off their beacons, so as to be visible to their comrades if and when they needed assistance. Since they are a hot headed species, if not hot blooded, they often needed the assistance of their comrades, and when you screwed with one of them, you screwed with them all. Clannish.
“I’m more concerned with potential Katons right now.” I said. “Their treachery seems to know no bounds.”
Tanya leaned over me to point out several signature designations that began with K’s, but those could be interpretations of alien names or even other human worlds. Katon wasn’t the only human world that began with the letter ‘K’. A Katon ship signature designation didn’t mean that it was a war ship, either, or even that if it were a war ship, it were after us. We were a long way from Katon space now and the Katons might still believe their Battleship chasing us. I did not think they would have expected us to defeat it. I hadn’t expected it. That we had defeated it was completely Karma. The Katons had got what they deserved. Karma.
“I can think of about a hundred other alien groups you’ve pissed off equally.” Tanya said as she walked over and sat in my Captain’s Chair. “And that’s only since I’ve known you. I’m sure the real numbers are staggering beyond belief.”
“And you’re the goddess of love,” I sneered, “spreading love and warmth everywhere you go!”
“I may not be the goddess of love, but I’m not a cold blooded murderer. Why don’t you just kill them first and save all that extra drama for the vid screens!”
Then I did look up from the scan. To glare at her. Coto chittered from the ceiling above me but it was a subdued noise. Coto and Tanya had their understanding. I was sure my insect friend had the olfactory senses of all its kind and would smell it if Tanya were giving off a fear scent. Though I could not smell it myself I knew that she was not. There was very little of the physical nature that Tanya feared, and maybe nothing of the spiritual, either, as far as I knew.
I wondered if I ever smelled of fear?
I changed my glare to a smile to let her know she had won no points and nonchalantly went back to watching scan. I had turned the helm over to the Kievor’s automated docking AI before Tanya had walked onto the Bridge so there was actually little for me to do but watch, but still I wanted to be careful. Be sure no other ships tried to get near enough to us to attack before we got into the Kievor’s Protected Zone. Our own sensors would warn if any other ship were trying to train a photon cannon on us, a photon cannon had to be charged prior to being fired, but I liked to watch anyway. Once we were inside the Kievor’s Protected Zone we could let down our guards completely. The Kievor’s would not allow a ship inside their Protected Zone to be attacked by any other. That was part of the allure of trading or visiting a Kievor Trade Station. You knew you were completely safe as long as you could continue to pay the docking fees. After that you were on your own.
I especially liked it because it didn’t matter who I pissed off while I was aboard the Trade Station itself; because I could hit warp before departing the Protected Zone and after that there was almost no one who could catch me. It was probably a big part of why I had so many enemies. Their only chance was to kill me in person, right up front and in my face, and I’m even harder to kill like that. Where I grew to manhood, it was eat or be eaten, and many it were who were eaten long before they reached manhood.
I really should have had the crew at their gun posts, but if I knew them they wouldn’t be far from them. Even though we had yet to enter the Protected Zone proper, we were now under Kievor docking protocol and though technically we could be attacked with impunity the Kievors are a mysterious race and as such unpredictable. I wouldn’t dare attack someone else this close to the Kievor’s Protected Zone for fear the Kievors wouldn’t like it. The last thing anyone would ever want to do is antagonize them. Their weaponry is so far beyond anything man or any of the other races man has so far encountered that it makes them almost Godlike in their powers. So far beyond man’s technological understanding to be classified almost as magic, though of course there is no such thing as magic. Everything in the Universe can be explained by one Universal Law or other, even if those Laws are not known to every race. The Laws exist and they are uniform and unchanging, but are like magic to unsophisticated man.
Melanie Vang suddenly came through the hatchway and onto the Bridge, startling both I and Tanya, I think. I know I looked at her longer than was necessary and Tanya’s eyes seemed to be glued to Melanie’s face. Melanie almost never came on the Bridge.
I had the strangest sensation, a mix of inquisitiveness and fear, as I felt Melanie walk over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I flinched just the slightest, so unexpected was the act.
“Can I speak with you a moment?” Melanie asked me, her hand still too familiarly upon my shoulder.
“Sure Melanie.” I said casually. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s personal, Marc. Can I talk to you in private?”
I looked away from scan again long enough to look up into her limpid eyes. She looked soft and vulnerable, but that image didn’t jibe with the Melanie Vang I knew! Not the Melanie Vang whose plasma cannon had slagged to molten metal the escape pods from a converted to war cruise liner we had fought in the just resolved conflict. Not the same Melanie Vang who is a master martial artist. Not the same Melanie Vang who had ripped out her owner’s throat with a scrap piece of steel. Not the same Melanie Vang for any number of reasons, and yet, the evidence that there was also this needy Melanie Vang was standing right there next to me, her hand still resting suggestively on my shoulder.
“All right.” I agreed. “But I’m busy right now. Once we’re within the Protected Zone . . . “
“I’ll be in my quarters.” Melanie said and walked off the Bridge, but not before giving my shoulder a squeeze.
I couldn’t help the glance I sent Tanya’s way after Melanie left. Her eyes were burning holes in the side of my head and probably would have succeeded in cutting all the way through if I had not looked at her.
“What?” I demanded.
“I’ll be in my quarters, Captain!” Tanya mimicked smugly. “I have some personal business only you can satisfy!” She said this slowly and seductively, for a moment making me forget that she wouldn’t kill me and eat me if I was ever stupid enough to go there with her, but only for a moment, and then I remembered who she was.
Now, I’m used to women wanting me. It comes with the territory when you are as good looking as I am, but I had never given Melanie any reason to think I was interested in her. It has always been my policy, as long as I have owned Last Chance, sixteen years now, not to encourage my crew inappropriately. As hard as it has been for me sometimes, the darkest recesses of interstellar space can also sometimes be the loneliest, I have never broken my rule.
I don’t flirt or talk sexual innuendo. I keep my business relationships strictly business, strictly professional. I have to be able to count on these people in the crunch, and I do not want there to be the possibility of personal matters interrupting the professionalism that is required in some of the situations in which we find ourselves. I need to be able to count on these people. My crew also knows of my rule. There are no secrets. I tell everyone up front how it is and how it will remain, so it was with a certain degree of unsettling co
ntemplation that I reflected upon Melanie’s actions. I did not understand how she had gotten the wrong signal from me. I was sure I had done nothing to warrant it.
“Do you want me to take over so you can go take care of Melanie’s needs?” Tanya asked, all innocence in her voice.
“No Tanya,” I said tersely, “I’ll do my job before I go see what she wants.”
“Oh you know what she wants.” Tanya said.
“I don’t know anything!” I snapped, finally starting to come unglued.
“Nice comeback.” Tanya said with a chuckle. She got up and walked over to stand behind me, for once not treading too softly not to be heard.
My skin positively crawled as she stood there behind me. I really shouldn’t feel this way about Tanya because Tanya has proven her loyalty so many times it goes beyond counting. She has crewed with me eleven long years and never once, beside her sharp tongue, given me pause to regret recruiting her, yet she had this power over me. Probably over everyone. I just couldn’t shake the sensation as she stood behind me. I’m sure she knew this, and reveled in it. Hell, her olfactory senses had probably been enhanced like the rest of her and she could smell my fear as easily as could Coto.
I was losing my concentration on the scan when she put her hand on my shoulder, the same exact place where Melanie had touched me, and gave me a sexual caress.
“Oh Marc! I need you!” She said, then she broke out laughing, maybe the loudest laugh I have ever heard her utter. She walked over to my Captain’s Chair and fell into it laughing, peals of mirth still tolling out from her like the bells of St. Augustine on a Sunday morning call to prayers.
I’m pretty sure I turned red in both anger and embarrassment. I know certainly I had no ready retort. For once I was completely tongue tied with nothing to say. I just sat there, studying my scanner screen, the blood hot in my cheeks, while Tanya laughed and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” David Bren asked as he came onto the Bridge. I hadn’t even heard him enter over Tanya’s laughter.
I turned to stare at Tanya, already sure I knew where she was thinking about taking this. She had an obvious conniving look on her face and I glared at her menacingly. I knew that look well. I shook my head ‘no’, but she had already decided and once decided, there was little that could sway her.
“Your girlfriend is waiting in her rooms for Marc right now. There’s a little something-something going on I thought you should be aware of.”
I sat speechlessly stupefied as Bren looked back and forth between us. I tried to make my face tell the lie but apparently I was unsuccessful. Suddenly he turned and was gone from the Bridge, before I could utter a single word.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I demanded of Tanya once I had recovered my wits. I’d completely given up watching the scan now to glare angrily at Tanya’s smug face, hardly able to believe what I had just witnessed, like I didn’t even know who she was anymore. There was obviously some kind of epidemic of this going around, like the flu, or the black plague.
“There is something wrong with her.” Tanya said. “I don’t know what it is. I only know that there’s something the fuck wrong with her, something other than just seducing you, and I’m not having it.”
“Really?” I said, the word dripping sarcasm. “Just what is it she’s up to, other than maybe having a hard time dealing with her new hormones?” Often those who went through rejuvenation had a hard time acclimating to their new younger bodies and the return of those youthful squirts of testosterone and estrogen, hormones and all the rest. I didn’t think it could be more than that.
“You had better watch that scan.” Tanya said, ignoring my question.
“We’re more of a danger to ourselves than any outside influence could be.” I said sarcastically, ignoring the scanner and keeping my angry eyes glued to hers. “Just leave us to our own devices and we’ll kill ourselves. No need for outside influence.”
“That was funny, Marc. Are you going to watch that scan?” Calm. Composed. Tanya all the way.
“So what is she up to, Tanya?” I demanded, still ignoring the scanner, risking my life as well as hers, needlessly, the only thing that really gets under her skin.
“I don’t know the answer to that, Marc, but I think you’ve known me long enough to know my hunches are seldom unfounded.” Tanya said seriously. “I may not know what the issue is, but I do know that there is one. Something is wrong, though I have no way of guessing what that might be.”
“Maybe or maybe not, but this was no way to go about resolving it. Did you have to bring Bren into it?” I demanded with resignation. She had done it because she had felt like doing it, and for no other reason than that. “If Bren leaves us, and you know that we cannot afford that, I’m holding you personally responsible!”
“What you gonna do? Dock my pay?”
I was a little behind on wages.
“Watch the Bridge while I go and try to fix this. I guess I can count on you to do that, at least.”
“Sure Marc.” She answered, all innocence again.
I got up and departed but wasn’t even off the Bridge before she had taken my seat at the scan console. She might have no problem with risking others’ lives, but she took her own very seriously.
Last Chance might be a luxury yacht but she was still no more than a flying tin can. The tight little corridor passing the Bridge led to two staircases, one up and one down, and beyond that, at the end of the long corridor on this uppermost of levels, lay the door to the sealed fusion reaction chamber, its Forbidden radiation warning sign a grim reminder of the forces at work behind the thin steel and carbon walls and of the fragile nature of human existence. Man had yet to escape his deadly dance with radiation, but Last Chance had the best shielding money could buy and only a terrible breach of structural integrity could release its deadly force upon us. Any damage that severe would already have opened us to vacuum in the first place, or so the theory went, but I felt sobered every time I looked down that corridor and at that door, knowing that just beyond it forces were at work that made insignificant the thought of man’s puny control over nature.
The fusion reaction chamber and the Bridge were at the innermost core of Last Chance. Designed to be the last sections to fail, or fall under siege, the hard inner shell, the Command and power source. Once you cracked this inner nut you had cracked Last Chance, but conversely, until you had cracked it, you hadn’t cracked me, because while there was power and command, there was still hope.
I took the descending staircase to the next lower level, where Melanie had her quarters. Last Chance is five levels altogether. The lowest were the converted cargo holds. The second, where I was now, living and recreation areas. The third held the Bridge, the fusion reaction chambers, and the warp engines. The fourth was the galley, more rooms and other recreation areas. The fifth level was really more than one level, but it was considered a level because there was an access way to the photon cannon there. The photon cannon took up more space than all of the rest of the levels combined. It was, in fact, about ninety percent of Last Chance’s mass.
Melanie’s hatch was only a few steps beyond the staircase and I turned towards it with more than a little trepidation. I was really hoping Bren would be here already so I could talk to them together but in that I was to be thwarted. As I neared her hatch it dilated open and there she stood, just inside, wearing nothing but a seductive smile.
She must have taken my harshly indrawn breath as a sign that I was pleased because she smiled and held out her hand for me to take, so she could draw me into her quarters.
“Melanie!” I exclaimed. “You know my rule and you know I don’t break it. What’s gotten into you?”
Her eyes slitted at the rebuke but she wasn’t deterred. She walked right out into the hall and up to me, holding my eyes the entire way, demurely, passively, she was mine for the taking, all I had to do was take her. Let me just say here and now, I was excruciatingly tempted, but I have not gotten t
o where I am now in my life by breaking my own rules. As tough as it was, I took a step back away from her, shaking my head in the negative.
A ‘tsk’ escaped her lips as her eyes re-slitted at this further rebuke. Her lips tightened into a vicious smile that was only a caricature of the Melanie Vang I knew, or at least thought I had known. For a moment further I thought she was going to attempt to strike me; her body tensed, her small shapely breasts and rigid nipples quivering in impotent rage, her hands clenching, her pupils dilating and the veins in her neck beginning to throb strongly. She was a sight to see in this primordial state and I think I was even more attracted to her then than I had been in the beginning, or at any other time I had ever known her.
Footsteps sounded on the staircase down the corridor, interrupting whatever Melanie had been contemplating doing, but she still just stood there staring at me, daring me not to take her into her quarters, still wanting me despite my rebuke. This was so out of character I simply did not know what to say. This was not the Melanie I knew, but for the life of me couldn’t figure out where this Melanie had come from.
The footsteps came down the staircase and around the corner and there stood Bren, wearing first the most astonished look I could ever imagine, horror mixed with acute pain, and then the first really angry look I had ever seen him direct my way, once the enormity of the situation had imprinted itself fully upon him.
His face went through a transformation, changing from the pain and hurt of the humiliation and betrayal to the insane rage of the spurned lover. I didn’t know what he might not attempt. I thought that just about anything was possible, at this point.
I did a double take around myself to make sure Coto had not followed me but had not. Coto would sometimes wait a bit before following, to see if I was coming right back before bestirring itself, like for my constant trips to the head to drain off all the coffee I drank incessantly, or the pacing back and forth around the ship that I was known to do when I was becoming footloose and feeling cramped in the ship. I didn’t want Coto biting Bren if Bren actually got up the courage to do something crazy, like he appeared to be contemplating.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary Page 6