Chronicles of a Space Mercenary

by Ronald Wintrick

  “Yep.” I agreed.

  “No wonder the Katons were so hot to get their Trinium back. Everyone’s bringing the Kievors Trinium and no one knows what they want with it, only that they’re paying out of their grass eating asses for it. The Katons must have been furious when they realized how high the price of Trinium had gone. It’s still rising, by the way. If you’d have hung onto it just a little longer . . .”

  “Do I want to know what it’s going for now?” I asked.

  “Probably not.” She conceded. “And we had a whole lot of it!”

  “Yeah.” I admitted without admitting exactly just how much.

  “No you probably don’t need that kind of shock right now then. Let’s just say it’s gone up considerably, and leave it at that.”

  “And no one knows what it’s all about?” I asked as we went into the lounge and we both sat down. “They could have raised their price only marginally and everyone still would have brought all their stock in. Why the huge price increase? Why the rush?” Then the fact of the Kievor’s strange job offer struck me like a brick. The Kievors themselves were the rush, or more accurately, this other technological race with whom we were unfamiliar. That reminded me I needed to do something with those Kievor Credits, before they became obsolete.

  “No one seems to know anything but the Kievors themselves and they aren’t talking.” Tanya said, telling me nothing I did not already know. “Bren’s been hacking every unsecured connection he can find, but he’s found nothing either. Everyone’s asking the same questions, with no answers, and meanwhile the rush to acquire Trinium goes on.”

  “So what was the deal with the arm?” Tanya asked slyly.

  “It was that damn lizard’s mate. The big female that had been hunting me the last time we were here.”

  “Got your arm!” Tanya laughed. “You know, Marc, the only reason I didn’t blast that male . . . “ She paused, leaving me wondering.

  “Yeah?”

  “It actually caught me by surprise, too.” She confessed. “That reptile was blazingly fast.”

  “You almost had to fish my head out of its stomach. Do you think the doc could have fixed that?”

  “Getting your head back would have been the tricky part.” Tanya said with a laugh. “So the female was even faster, I gather?”

  “A trifle.” I admitted. “She caught me off guard, mostly. They all just look the same to me, but she recognized me right off.”

  “Probably smelled you.” Tanya agreed.

  “Tanya, where’s Coto?” I asked suddenly, though of course I already knew, but hadn’t been ready or willing to face it. He hadn’t shown up on the heat scan I ran. That meant he wasn’t aboard. There was only one reason he wouldn’t be aboard.

  “Coto didn’t make it, Marc. He died fighting for you. There wasn’t enough left of him to put in the other doc. I’m really sorry, Marc.”

  “Did he redeem himself?” I asked quietly. All a fighting man, or Xiong, for that matter, could ask for in the end was an honorable death and that he took some of his enemies with him when he went.

  “He redeemed himself well.”

  There was nothing else to be said. I was not going to cry. I have seen too many die in my life. Death was a part of life, but I would miss my little friend sorely. Coto was only a damn bug, but he had been my friend for all that. Maybe the best friend I had ever had. I couldn’t believe he was gone. Then I almost did cry, but I forced it down. That’s how we dealt with our feelings where I am from; we force them down as far as they will go and then we pretend we don’t feel them.

  Coto!!

  “Who else must die because of me?”

  “No one else but Katons are going to die because of this.” Tanya swore vehemently. “You want to take the rest of those Kievor Credits and buy a planet buster from the Kievors? Put an end to them once and for all?”

  I looked at her in stunned silence, because we really could do that. We could annihilate every living thing on planet Katon. Right down to microbial life. Now, I can be one mean, brutal bastard, circumstances dictating I be that, but as I looked at Tanya, trying to find the chink in her resolve, and realizing there was none, that she was deadly serious, I realized that there was no one meaner. I know I reiterate, but it occurred to me once again that Tanya was by far the meanest bitch I have ever met. A straight killer when crossed, and she had been crossed. But I could not do that. Not an entire planet of innocent people. I wasn’t that mean. I’m just not.

  “No Tanya.” I finally said, though the decision did not come easily. The Katons had really burned me good. “There are too many innocents. You’d do it though, were the roles reversed?”

  “Without reservation, Marc.” Tanya agreed. “They made the rules. I would but follow them as dictated. We will never hear the end of them unless we do something about them, Marc. You do realize this, don’t you. They’ll never let us rest. Never.”

  Yeah, she would do it, and without reservation.

  “I have a better idea. Listen to this.” I said, and explained what I had in mind.

  Melanie and I barely spoke as we prepared Last Chance for departure. I bought enough food, fuel and booze to last a lifetime, and then bought a rejuvenation program for Last Chance’s doc that Bren could later sync to our existing program. We would never have to rely on anyone else ever again.

  We crammed the extra supplies into the vacant suites, wedging the boxes in place and then taping them down with duct tape, the ‘cure all’ of modern space travel. The lower holds I left empty. We would still work for a living. We were still a working ship.

  Lastly I purchased three fifty-kiloton nuclear missiles and had them installed on Last Chance. The Kievor’s robotic servants mounted all three launch platforms and missiles in less than an hour, including slaving their guidance systems to our Targ.

  “Incredible.” Was all Bren could say.

  The total bill was over two hundred thousand Kievor Credits, but Last Chance needed more striking power for what I had in mind. Where we were going it would probably mean the difference between success or failure, and failure, of course, meant death. I had the remainder of my Kievor Credits exchanged for various human currencies (and not Katon) in case there were no Kievors the next time I came through here. I didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  Cheryl wouldn’t answer her communicator when I called and had changed the message on her answering service to something unfriendly and meant for me. Still I left a message explaining what had happened but she didn’t seem interested in caring. Her only response was to change her answering service to something even worse.

  I considered just dropping in on her but I remembered the warning she had given me. I wasn’t sure which I worried about more. The Katons catching me on my way there, or the Katons not catching me on the way there. I figured my odds with the Katons were better. I had let my girl down again.

  I noticed that Tanya was wearing new jewelry again. She had more jewelry than could be accounted for, but I always recognized when she was wearing something new. Possibly the look on her face like the cat that ate the canary. This new necklace looked to be fabulously expensive, boasting a fifty carat or more red diamond (which was rare even in small carats) hung in a Trinium setting. Trinium was suddenly valuable so it was the new bling. I thought that someone was sure to have died to provide her with it, if not in the taking then by the poor creature responsible for its care. Lizards took such things seriously. If it was your job to provide security and you failed, well . . .

  “I hope you didn’t steal that from any large lizards.” I told her while we waited on the Bridge for the rest of the crew to return from a last minute shore leave.

  Tanya’s hand went to the diamond on its Trinium chain around her neck, caressing it lovingly, but she only smiled at me, not bothering to answer the question. Female lizards loved their jewelry as much as human women, but let their relative ferocity sometimes go to their heads where it cam
e to guarding that jewelry. This seemed to hold true for most lizards and made Tanya’s occupation all that much easier. Thievery wasn’t common among lizards either, and sometimes it came as quite a shock to these lizards when they were hit, but there was little that would deter Tanya. Not only would she steal from anyone, but she would then wear the stolen goods right out in public! She was utterly fearless and I sometimes thought she targeted the biggest, baddest reptiles just because they were the easiest to hit. They weren’t expecting anyone to have the balls to do it. Tanya had the balls, all right, and then some.

  The crew returned uneventfully. They’d gone as a group, all armed with blast rifles, so it was no surprise they hadn’t been bothered. I requested and received a departure clearance while they boarded and we were away and clear of the docking bay, back in open space, by the time they had all settled into their stations.

  I got the all clear signal from the Kievors even as I swung Last Chance around to put our bow into the wind, so to speak, aimed for interstellar space. I wasn’t going to waste any time because I didn’t know who might be waiting for us (though I had a fairly good idea) and I wanted to give them as little chance as possible to follow us. The main fusion engine slammed us into our seats despite the environmental gravity field (which had never been designed to deal with the thrust our retro-fitted engine produced) and we were away.

  “Put us in warp ASAP.” I told Bren, and I put us in a course away from Katon space. I wanted everyone who might be interested thinking we were running as fast and as far from Katon space as we could get. I supposed if we were smart we really would be. No one ever said I was too smart.

  We cut a swath through normal space, accelerating quickly, the Kievor Trade Station quickly falling behind. We raced towards the perimeter of the Protected Zone, gaining velocity as we went, but we never found out if any of the myriad ships visible on scan were waiting for us on the other side of that imaginary line because long before we crossed it we were gone into warp space. If any had been waiting for us, we would seem to have vanished right into thin air, or in this case, thinner vacuum, before reaching International Space. I laughed with what must have sounded like a bit of hysteria, because both Bren and Tanya gave me strange looks. Accomplices only when ganging up on me. I supposed I could take that as a compliment, and really, there was little that could dim my feelings that moment. Nothing really compares to the moment when you leave your enemies behind and only interstellar space is out there in front of you.

  The warp sickness grabbed me but was soon gone as we passed through the wall of normal space and into interior space. We had accelerated to a better warp jump velocity before jumping so the transition was a minimal one. The stars on the monitors around us were no more than blurs now, moving past us at incredible speeds. Despite the warp sickness it was always exciting to enter warp space, no matter how many times I had done it before, no matter the warp sickness which grabbed me every time. It was exciting to know that I could overcome Mother Nature, that her laws were immutable, that mankind was learning to manipulate her laws, taking those steps which would eventually lead to complete control of the Universe around us. I hoped I was still around then to see it.

  “Deactivate warp.” I told Bren. It was hardest to get a warp space lock when your quarry was in and out of warp space and changing vectors every time, even if only slightly. More difficult but not impossible. “Be attentive.”

  Last Chance shuddered as David shut down the warp field and we were expelled from interior space. I threw the control yoke over hard to the starboard and felt the inertia push me into the left hand side of my seat as environmental gravity fought to compensate. We seemed to stagger a bit as Last Chance tried to travel in two directions at once.

  “Warp, Bren.” I said. This time my stomach lurched all the way up into my chest as we again forced our way into the fabric of space itself, my body not yet having gotten fully over the last transition.

  “Let them calculate our heading from that fusion signature.” I chuckled. It would nearly be impossible. Even though they would be able to detect the residue from our fusion engine, it would be difficult to calculate vector because our new vector would be a combination of two forces. Our inertia had continued to carry us forward while our fusion engine had been trying to push us sideways, so our new heading would be somewhere in the middle. They would have to determine our velocity as we exited warp, divide the thrust of our fusion engine (and don’t rely on manufacturer’s specs) by our mass and then divide again into our inertia. To detect us in warp space they would need to be following us exactly along our vector, so if we could confuse them now, if anyone was indeed following, they would stay confused.

  “They will be able to track us, but it’ll take them time.” Bren said.

  “I hope they are following.” Tanya said happily.

  “Don’t you dare shoot off any of those missiles.” I warned Tanya.

  “I’ll take that suggestion under advisement.” Tanya smirked.

  “It’s no suggestion, Tanya. I mean it.” I growled, but somehow I felt my warning wasn’t greeted with the respect I wanted. At just over fifty thousand Kievor Credits apiece the last thing I wanted was to have her shooting them off just for kicks.

  “What do we have them for, if not to defend ourselves?”

  “We’re going to need them where we’re going.” I explained. “We’ve never needed them before for mundane operations, we won’t need them now. I have a purpose for those.”

  Now that I had tempered back my statement Tanya didn’t seem so set on disobeying just to prove her point, but she didn’t seem to be taking it too seriously, either. If Coto were here he would be chittering at her now. Damn!

  We ran in and out of warp seven more times to further confuse our trail and anyone who might be following. Before we went into our last warp I had Bren plot us a course for Katon space and our destination, the Katon controlled moon Cribon. We would come out of warp right on top of them. I keyed ship’s communicator;

  “Everyone can stand down.” I said. “But don’t go wandering off!”

  Suddenly I felt really tired. I had apparently been more worried and stressed than I had supposed I had been and the tension had been wearing on me. I needed to speak heart to heart with Melanie and get this out in the open. Get it over with. Deal with it.

  I had to give Melanie her props. She really had faith in me to do the right thing, and if the Katons really had installed subconscious commands into her psyche, then it really had not been her fault, of course, and the fact that she had broken those commands to rescue me an incredible feat of self will. Then to trust that I would do the right thing after all was said and done. Now that really took a leap of faith and courage. I certainly knew what I had planned when Tanya stopped me.

  “Hold down the Bridge.” I told Bren and Tanya. Ordinarily the auto-pilot was more than sufficient while in warp space, but we didn’t know what determined enemy might be tracking us, so no chances. I got up and headed for the lower rear Gunner’s Station.

  The lower rear plasma gun was an independently tracking single gun turret slung under the very rear cargo hold, but it wasn’t actually a part of the hold, being separated by a steel partition. Melanie was still strapped into the mechanism when I got there, not taking my release to stand down seriously. The lower rear gun hatch has a clear bubble top and Melanie saw me climbing down the access tube and opened the hatch to allow me to climb in with her. She looked at me with an expression of extreme sorrow written indelibly on her face.

  “I’m so sorry, Marc.” She apologized.

  “Oh hell, Melanie,” I said, sighing, “it wasn’t your damn fault, but how do we stop it from happening again? How do I trust you enough to be able to turn my back on you? How am I supposed to act?”

  “I’m pretty sure I have it under control.” Melanie answered. “It was really hard at first. I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why, or where the thoughts had come from. I had no reason to feel traitoro
us, I just did. I’ve been very happy here. You know what I come from. I know what I come from, and I know who took me in when I had nowhere else to turn. You’re the first man who has ever done anything for me without wanting something in return. Yet I still couldn’t resist my traitorous thoughts. You know I have been content here.”

  “I have always thought so.” I said.

  “When we fled the Katons was when it really kicked in. When it really hit me. I had to struggle to pull the trigger of my plasma gun. It was like there were two people inside me. One wanted with all desperation to kill the Katons, the other wanted with all desperation to let the Katons kill us. I knew we were fighting for our lives and only my will for self-preservation carried me through, allowed me to continue fighting. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling.” Now Melanie sighed. Then went on; “I tried to give myself to you. I was fighting my traitorous feelings. I thought that by giving myself to you I would bond myself to you and defeat the monster which was trying to rise within me, but then you turned me down. I was furious with you, my feelings all confused to begin, and I let it get the best of me. Marc, I swear it to you, it was the Katons who did this to me. It was in my mind to turn you in to the Katons and only the Katons. Frankly,” and here she smiled, “I know plenty of beings you’ve pissed off. When I found myself hating you and wanting to do you in, it was the first ray of understanding within me when I had to ask myself ‘why only the Katons’? It was then that I began to realize. Even though I did turn you in to the Katons after that, it was from that moment on that I began to work through it. Knowing that the thought is alien has allowed me to begin to self-clear it from my mind. Like the Scientologists. Being aware is the first step to being clear. I have mostly removed it now. It no longer has power over me.”

  “Let’s hope not.” I said. “I won’t be so lucky next time.”

  “You were born under a lucky star.” Melanie said as she began to climb out of her gunner’s harness. The harness was not necessary to the operation of the rotating gunner’s turret, but it helped to offset being thrown around as the turret swung around tracking its targets. Or as the ship itself jinked through the battlefield. I couldn’t help but notice her breasts as they pressed against her ships suit as she twisted around unstrapping herself, and her trim, athletic figure inside that ship suit. She had to climb over me to get out of the turret and I had her firm posterior in my face a moment as she seemed to linger getting past me.