Chronicles of a Space Mercenary

by Ronald Wintrick

  The methane breathers were the most extreme type of life forms, to my way of thinking. They were almost always crablike, or tentacled, or some other form that reminded one of water life. This group was about half my height but obviously much heavier. Heavy worlders, evolved in pooled methane, no doubt. They had thick tentacles, strange double jointed legs, and hardened shells and pincers that told of survival only through struggle. Their carnivorous heads were covered by atmospheric helmets despite the Kievor’s guarantee of a breathable atmosphere. Untrusting creatures. Trust was a hard thing to earn. This group must not have been dealing with the Kievors long, either that or they just didn’t care if the Kievors could be trusted or not, they weren’t going to take chances with their lives. They didn’t move to allow us to pass so we had to squeeze through them to get past, though as far as I could tell they were not armed with conventional weapons. They were obviously confident of their prowess with the weapons nature had given them. I was glad when we were through them. Methane breathers unsettle me. There is just something that is not quite right about them. Something we oxygen breathers just can’t fathom.

  I hurried across the corridor to the docking bays exterior wall (still inside the corridor) and carefully began working my way along the wall towards the bays entrance and the safety of Last Chance resting within it. I just knew I was going to find Katon Troopers waiting for me within the bay and I kept expecting them to come pouring out of the entrance and begin firing on me, but there was no one there as I ran around the corner and into the dock, blaster up and ready, adrenaline pumping again and my blood pounding in my veins. It was kind of a letdown. I was primed for murder.

  I set off for Last Chance questioning my luck. Though things could hardly be said to have gone well, I was in fairly decent condition considering the odds I had faced. I really should have been dead, by all counts and reckoning.

  Last Chance is by no means a large ship, as space craft go, but yet she seemed plenty long to me as I ran down her length for her midsection and the air lock. I got underneath the lock just as the first of the Katon Troopers began pouring into the dock, weapons up and firing, their energy bolts sizzling past me as I prayed for the trans-metal platform to hurry and take me to the safety of my ship, but wishing it to hurry did little to actually speed its progress. I saw that it would never get me there fast enough. It was going too slow. Much too slow.

  Coto jumped from the rising platform as I opened fire on the bottled Troopers in the opening of the dock. My fire was immediately effective on the bunched soldiers. There was no where they could go to escape, and I killed a number of them instantly. Those who got through scattered to hiding places behind barrels, crates, boxes and other parcels that lined the walls of the dock. Coto raced across to one of the Trooper’s hiding place and leapt over the pile of boxes and directly onto the man. Hands caught at Coto as he landed upon the man, but Coto is many times stronger, pound for pound, than a human, and once attached, there was very little that could induce the insect to let go. Especially when he was infuriated. The screams were pitiful.

  Laser fire rained all around me as I rose up with the platform, but somehow missed me. I was a natural killer, knowing which targets were most important and returning that fire with withering blasts of my own. I did not miss. These Katons wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight in the ghetto where I grew up. They would have been dog meat, and I mean that literally. Where I grew up, you did not pull your weapon unless you were going to use it, and you did not use it frivolously. You did not miss. That missed shot would mean your death, where I grew up. I did not miss now. They were still pouring into the dock.

  I aimed at a hard eyed Katon who I found taking his time to get his bead on me. Long years of practice meant I had only to look at him and my weapon hand followed, and I fired, but he fired at the same time, and our mutual messengers of death crossed one another’s paths as they raced to do their duties. They did their duties. My blaster bolt nearly completely obliterated the Katon, but then something like a sledge hammer smashed at me, flinging me to the deck of the rising platform.

  My head cleared enough that I was able to look down at myself. I was lying on my back, my neck twisted at a funny angle so that I could see that my right arm, my right shoulder, and a good chunk of my chest had been completely burned away. It wasn’t good.

  I needed to get up and get into Last Chance and the auto-doc, but when I tried I couldn’t move even the slightest bit. Not one muscle. I seemed to be frozen. All but my mind. I was able to think clearly enough about what was going to happen to me if I did not get up and get moving, soldier! But I couldn’t even make myself twitch. That was when I noticed that I wasn’t breathing.

  I lay there mostly already dead, my mind just taking longer than the rest of me, my last little oxygen being used to think these departing thoughts. There was nothing more I could do. This was it. My blood was pooling around me as I bled out. My heart no longer beat, my blood wasn’t squirting, but just running out. My vision began to grow dim and began to tunnel. Just before I went, though I couldn’t be positive, I thought I saw green fire lancing out from Last Chance. Then I was gone, the cares of the world no longer my own.

  CHAPTER 5

  Surprised, I began swimming up from the deep, black abyss where I had been resting so peacefully. I was reluctant to be disturbed. I was comfortable. The climb back to consciousness was an unwelcome intrusion to my accepted peace. I didn’t like it.

  Suddenly remembering my last moments of consciousness, I did then begin to struggle to regain my life, and that struggle somehow reached my muscles, but I was still held immobile. This was the immobility of a gravity field, however, I realized quickly enough. I was in the auto-doc, or an auto-doc, I wasn’t sure it was my own, but I calmed. I was alive. While I yet possessed life, I had the chance to win free. While I possessed life, I would win free. If it had been the Katons who had restored me my life, they would learn to regret their decision. The idea that the Katons would preserve my life just to bring me to trial (and torture) did not surprise me. With rejuvenation a prisoner could be kept alive and tortured literally forever. I knew the Katons were incensed with me, but I wondered if they could be that incensed? At this point I wasn’t willing to put anything past the Katons.

  The machine, sensing I was awake and apparently fully healed (the auto-doc wouldn’t have awoken me until full recovery) it began to hum and a moment later opened. The end at my feet suddenly turned brilliantly bright as it opened to the light of the infirmary and then I was sliding towards that opening.

  The light was blinding but I forced my eyes open so that I would be prepared when the doc disgorged me. I was going to attack whoever was waiting on the outside of this doc for me. They had one hell of a surprise coming if they thought that just because I was no longer armed I was no longer deadly. I had participated in more fights to the death than I cared to count, before I had ever gotten my first real weapon. It wouldn’t matter if there were twenty lasers trained on me when I came out of this doc. I was attacking. I had nothing to lose. Better to die now than a million times later.

  The auto-doc slid me out of its tubular enclosure and set me down gently on the recovery mattress, and the gravity field released me. I was in my own infirmary, however, and there was no one to attack. I began working to set aside the fury I had worked myself into in preparation of finding myself elsewhere than my own ship. I sighed a great sigh of relief.

  Somehow I had survived. Someone had come back to Last Chance between the time I had been here last and the time I had returned, only a short interval, and was responsible for saving my life. I wondered who it had been.

  I sat up and surveyed my nakedness. I couldn’t find any marks or scars to show where my wounds had been, which continued to amaze me no matter how many times I have gone through the process. No matter how many times I have been restored by an auto-doc. Whoever had gotten to me had done so quickly. I had been dead and gone. To be honest I was surprised I had been able t
o make the recovery at all, so horrendous had been my wounds.

  There were clothes in a neat pile on the bed of the other doc, Last Chance boasted two, but obviously weren’t the clothes I had been wearing. I dressed slowly, working the kinks out of my new body as parts of it experienced movement for the first time ever, but otherwise I felt fine, rested and refreshed.

  I left the infirmary and walked down to the Bridge, seeing no one. The Bridge was deserted. I sat in my Captain’s Chair and brought up exterior scan. We were still parked in the docking bay of the Kievor Trade Station, while within our ship protected by Last Chance’s guns and Last Chance herself protected by the Kievors. No other ship could fire on her within the Kievor’s sacred precincts.

  There didn’t seem to be any signs of the destruction that would have occurred if Last Chance had sprayed plasma fire within the docking bay, but I did notice that there were no longer any of the old crates and containers lining the wall which had been there before. There was also no saying that plasma fire would damage Kievor trans-metal, and that if it would, or had, it would have been immediately repaired, that being the nature of trans-metal.

  I didn’t know how long I had been unconscious. I wondered if my extreme estimation of my injuries had been nothing more than an oxygen hallucination, but did not believe that for a moment. It was only a fleeting thought, quickly gone. I know what I had seen and I know how very close I had come. Whoever had rescued me had must have had to deal with the Katons first, but with Last Chance’s guns that would have been quick work. There had been dozens of Katon Troopers. It must have been a blood bath. Would they never learn?

  It was early morning now, by ship’s time, though time was irrelevant in space and had ceased to be of any importance to me long ago. Time had ceased to be universally standardizable when men had colonized their first worlds. Even planets that were Earth-like in temperate, atmospheric and gravitational conditions still did not rotate at the same speed as Earth. Every new world had its own unique ‘day’. No two worlds were the same, so time had ceased to have importance. On Last Chance we had shifts, and how you broke up your time off shift was no one’s business but your own.

  I ran a heat signature scan over Last Chance and sure enough, everyone was aboard, even Melanie. Was it possible that she hadn’t been the turncoat? I wanted to believe so.

  But I didn’t. Whoever had informed had known about Cheryl, and that was either Melanie or Bren. Whoever had informed had known about Cheryl and, and was jealous! Further I couldn’t believe Bren would do something that stupid. No matter how angry he might have been with me, he would also know what I would do to him if the Katons failed, and he knew me well enough to know that the Katons probably would fail.

  Now I was in that position. One of them was the turncoat! One of them had to be dealt with, because I could not just let it go. It would happen again if it wasn’t dealt with now. Yet how could one of them have done that and then come home to roost right in my ship, knowing I was going to wake up soon and want answers, and vengeance. And if one of them had done it, why hadn’t they finished me while I lay defenseless within the doc?

  I went to the weapons locker just outside the Bridge, punched in the access code on the keypad, opened the fire, laser and explosion proof access panel, and selected out two new Kievor hand blasters from the arsenal I kept there, a left and a right hand weapon, then closed the panel behind me. I moved to the staircase and went down, mindlessly bent on destroying Melanie before she could do me more damage. I might get rid of whoever was responsible for letting her back aboard, as well, even if it was Tanya. Had the whole universe gone mad? Melanie could have finished me easily while I lay in the doc! But why hadn’t she?

  With that thought I had another one. Where was my pet? Where was Coto?

  I came around the corner into the second level corridor in sight of Melanie’s quarters and hadn’t taken two steps when Tanya stepped out into the hallway before me from the darkened entrance of a vacant suite, startling me and nearly getting herself blasted into the process. Only moments earlier my ship’s scan had shown her to be in her quarters, but I didn’t think about that. I was thinking about why the hell she was here now!

  “Where you going with those blasters, Marc?” Tanya asked me without preamble.

  “To take care of something I would have thought should have already been taken care of.” I snarled, not lowering the blasters an iota from where I already had them leveled and ready to fire.

  “There are a few things you need to be made aware of before you go busting in there, Marc.” Tanya said implacably, not perturbed by the blasters or my attitude one bit. I could already guess what was coming next; Melanie was sorry and I should forgive her and all that total bullshit.

  “I ain’t going for it.” I said.

  “Marc! Melanie did inform on you, and we’re still unsure about some of the details, but we do know that the Katons installed a subconscious command into her when they did her rejuvenation. Probably only to be triggered if you tried to desert, but somehow triggered by our fight, even though the Katons weren’t in the right. Why Melanie had such a struggle with it. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t do anything about it. It was programmed right into her.

  “Marc! She fought against it, and she was confused, so she tried to give herself to you out of some twisted idea to attach herself to you so fiercely that she would not be able to inform on you, but when you turned her down . . .

  “Marc! It was Melanie who rescued you! Except for her you’d be dead!”

  “Except for her I wouldn’t have been in that position in the first place!” I snapped at Tanya, but could what she was saying be true? In all honesty it made perfect sense. Nothing else could make sense. I should have known not to take rejuvenation from the Katons in the first place, but it was too good an offer to turn down.

  ‘It was your idea to work for the Katons in the first place.” Tanya snapped back.

  “Well what’s going to stop her from doing it again?” I asked. “The next time I make her a little angry she carves me up when my back’s turned or overloads the fusion drive and kills all of us! She can no longer be trusted.”

  “She saved your life, you bastard!” Tanya growled, becoming angry now herself. “Do you have any idea how hard that was for her to do? Subconscious programming is supposed to be unbreakable. I have never heard of a single instance of someone defying it. It is supposed to be foolproof. Yet she did break it, to rescue you, and to kill all those Katon Troopers in the dock.”

  “Why didn’t they just program all of us, then, if this was all supposed to have come from the Katons? It doesn’t make sense.” I said, but unconsciously my blasters were lowering, my resolve weakening. Finally, feeling foolish holding my blasters half up and half down, I let them fall to my sides. “Don’t you think I would have been the most logical target?”

  “Maybe they thought she was the weakest link. I really can’t answer that. I do remember that Melanie’s treatment seemed to take longer than everyone else. Maybe they just didn’t have the time to do it to everyone. Maybe they didn’t want to arouse suspicions. Maybe they thought one was sufficient. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it wasn’t her fault. If blame is to be apportioned, then it is to you that the largest share should be affixed. This is your fault. You cannot blame her.”

  “Fine.” I snapped. “I won’t kill her.”

  “If you could.” Tanya said, but I didn’t respond to her jibe. There was no point.

  “How long was I out?” I asked, changing the subject, though I certainly could have looked at the date while I had been on the Bridge. In other words, it really didn’t matter.

  “Five weeks.” Tanya answered while taking the blasters out of my hands. I let them go only reluctantly, and believe me, there is no one else in God’s Expansive Universe who could have done it besides Tanya. She had to pry my last fingers loose.

  “Fine.” I said, relinquishing them finally. Five weeks meant a thirty-
five hundred Credit docking fee. “Son of a bitch!” I swore thinking about it. It was more than I usually grossed per trip, much less just a docking fee, and the Kievors usually didn’t even charge you a docking fee if you were bringing them a load and you were in and out in a few days. After my last meeting with them, I knew they’d be charging me full price. There was no doubt about that.

  “I took the liberty of checking your account, Marc. I decided you could afford the fees. Those Katons don’t seem to want to give up and I’m fairly certain they’ll be waiting for us outside the Station. I didn’t want to take her out short a hand. Especially your hand. Now that you’re back among the living, you can decide how to kill us.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone spending five weeks in a doc before.” I admitted. “I must have been a mess.”

  “You were.” Tanya admitted, smiling for the first time since our encounter. She nodded her head that I should follow her and she began to lead me back up top. I followed.

  “Melanie got the video footage of the whole thing if you want to review it. You put up a hell of a fight. You got a bunch of them. Melanie got the rest.”

  “I did get a bunch of them, didn’t I?” I said, smiling at the remembrance. Something had clicked within me and I had been running like a machine; fast, accurate and sure. Deadly. Even so it had not been enough, and in the end that was what really mattered. Tanya led me to the fourth floor and the lounge there.

  “You didn’t get enough of them, Marc.” Tanya chided me. Leave it to Tanya to point out my failure. “Still, you were pretty impressive. You should have gotten off that platform. That was your mistake.”

  “I wasn’t thinking any too clearly by then.” I admitted.

  “We’re all a little unclear about all the rest of it, you’ll have to fill us in. Like why you were carrying your arm in your belt. Anyway, apparently you have a great number of Kievor Credits. Did that all come from the load of Trinium?”