Chronicles of a Space Mercenary

by Ronald Wintrick

  “I’m to kill him.” Meerla said and began to stride forward, but I put out my arm to forestall her. I’d look a weak ineffectual fool if I did not accept his challenge. There was the Law to consider, after all, and I wasn’t sure she could kill Krazdop. She had said that her Alartaw body was better than her human body had been, even with all its enhancements, but this wasn’t her fight. It was mine. I would fight it.

  I unbuttoned the Royal Cape and threw it to the floor unceremoniously. The shirt with all its medals and decorations I left in place. All the metal of the decorations might deflect a sword thrust, if I got lucky, but Lucky was my middle name and had carried me through many a tight scrape. I would need every ounce of luck I possessed today. Krazdop waited patiently while I prepared, a sneer on his lips and murder in his eyes, the weapons aimed at him from up and down the aisle deterring a premature attack. The thought crossed my mind that I could simply order him vaporized, but I didn’t know if that order would be followed. At this point, now that Puguta had failed me again, there was no other option but to take the reins of leadership into my own hands, by confident strength of will in single combat.

  Even if I was only barely able to defeat him, or if I came away seriously injured after killing him, it would be acceptable. No one doubted Morgata’s physical prowess. It wasn’t his personal prowess which had been in question, but his leadership of the Empire. Drug addict or not, he would be no easy conquest.

  He hardly looked the drug addict now I had been expecting. He looked to be as tough as he undoubtedly was. His clothing was skin tight, in the Alartaw fashion, and showed the hugely muscled physique below it in fine detail. He stood with the confident ease of experience, light on the balls of his feet, and looked as quick as a darting rattler.

  When I ripped free my bejeweled dagger the crowd gasped in dismay. I glanced around to see what could be the matter and that was when I saw that one of my Troopers had holstered his weapon and had drawn his own short sword to offer me. He put it back even as I watched. I had chosen my weapon. I tried not to let my own dismay show, and turned back to Krazdop, my blade held low.

  “You’re a fool, upstart.” Krazdop snarled, a confident grin now twisting his hideous features. He began twirling his blade in intricate circles and patterns that were nothing more than a blur to me, but that was nothing but show, the attack would have to be straight forward, and I was not unfamiliar with the heft of the cold steel within my own grasp. The skyscraper tenement where I was born and raised was run by vicious gangs of children and young adult terrorists (few lived into older age in the tenements) and I had mastered the use of the blade before my eight birthday. Real weapons amongst us had been as rare as a square meal. The military, which were funded by the wealthy elite, made sure of that. They didn’t care what we did to one another, and we did it with cold steel.

  Krazdop was an expert, obviously, and I was what? A gutter rat who had barely survived to escape the clutches of poverty. Ninety five percent of the human population now lived in utter poverty, and escape was rare, but I had done it. I am a survivor. I had proved that over and over again. What more powerful statement than that could be said for me. I had survived the hard way, while Krazdop had been born to it. He rushed me now, blade flashing, meaning to finish it.

  I didn’t have a lot of room in the small corridor afforded me by the shock barriers and the Troopers who lined it, but I had enough room to side step as Krazdop rushed by, his blade only missing by scant millimeters, whistling audibly through the air as it passed. He was holding his blade right handed so I had to twist to his left, and as he went by I tossed the blade to my left hand and lunged in, slicing at the back of his hand as he went by.

  Blood showered out around us as Krazdop spun from his right, his arm fully extended, the blade an extension of his arm. But I leapt back out of the way, coming up almost too short as I ran into the Troopers behind me.

  Krazdop glared at me as he reached up to feel the cut I had given him. Arterial spray pumped from the wound in spurts, getting on the crowd, the Troopers and even Meerla before she backed away. Ornamental dagger it might be, but it was an ornamental dagger with a keen edge.

  “Stand and fight, upstart.” Krazdop ordered insanely and rushed again, flinging the blood he had surreptitiously gathered in his left hand at my eyes as he rushed.

  It was a good throw. The blood hit my face and blurred the vision in my right eye. I didn’t even have time to blink. Krazdop rushed forward at an angle this time, cutting off the possibility of spinning away from his right side, thrusting his blade straight forward this time in the hardest sword stroke to avoid.

  I struck up and inward left handed, blade up, trying to parry as I now had to twist to my left side, his striking side, but I didn’t have time to get out of the way. My blade caught on his weapon, and it was the only chance I had of sweeping away the incoming blade, but I didn’t make it clear before my blade slipped free and he skewered me cleanly through my right shoulder. His leering face was all I could see through my clear left eye, and though I was shocked, and in agony, I wasn’t so shocked that I didn’t return his favor by grabbing him and pulling him close with my free right hand and then stabbing my blade to its hilt in his side. I pulled it free and stabbed him over and over again. I couldn’t stop myself, I was so petrified of his getting that sword free and stabbing me with it again someplace more damaging.

  Shock now showed on his face, and I realized just how lucky I had been in choosing the weapon I had chosen. If I had attempted to fight him with a short sword, a weapon I was completely unfamiliar with, I might add, he would have cut me to ribbons and there was no two ways about it. Infighting was in what I had been trained and Krazdop had paid the penalty of not knowing.

  I yanked the blade free a last time, the caricature of a grin twisting my own features into an evil rictus of a smile that must have been similar to his own of only moments ago, envisioning the fight to be over, I had cut him to ribbons and he surely would die, but he grabbed my wrist and began trying to twist the blade back upon me. His grip of iron was unbelievable to behold, like steel on flesh, and now my own grin must have faltered.

  Krazdop twisted, trying to yank free his sword while attempting at the same time to turn my own blade upon me, but I head butted him and stepped on his foot as he tried pulling away, so he stumbled and lost his grip on both his sword and my wrist. I leapt upon him as he fell, in the ghetto one learned never to lose a moment, without that killer instinct you were meat. He went down under me and straddling him, I got both hands on my blade hilt and short sword still hanging out of my shoulder, not too very far above my heart, shoved the blade home into his chest with every ounce of strength I possessed.

  He tried to hold it back. He was incredibly strong, but I was stronger, and I kneed him in his groin to soften him. He gave just enough for the blade to sink that further distance needed to pierce him, and then all resistance was gone, and the blade sank all the way home, into his beating, ferocious heart.

  I had to give the old man his due. His eyes widened in evident agony, and he knew he was defeated, but he let out not the slightest hint of his pain, nor did he surrender. He still pushed against my hands, but the effort was futile and slowly his eyes glazed over. I held the blade there in that old bastard’s heart until I was good and sure he was dead, and that took a bit.

  The Throne Room burst into thunderous applause and cheering. I staggered up from the late Emperor and looked around my new domain, no question now in anyone’s mind who the true Emperor really was. Sword still hanging from my shoulder, I went to the nearest Trooper wearing a de-atomizer, took it and turning back around, vaporized Krazdop. That was one son of a bitch who wasn’t going to be put in a doc (or whatever equivalent the Alartaw used) and re-animated to haunt me again.

  One of the Troopers found the controls inside the Throne to lower it back into its place while I stood there bleeding and near collapse, the sword still hanging, and really starting to hurt. When the Thro
ne had been lowered back, I staggered to it and yanked the Scepter free of its socket, turned to face the crowd, but instead found Meerla there in front of me. Unable to stop her, she reached up and yanked free Krazdop’s sword before I could protest. More blood splattered her but she was grinning from ear to ear, and for once it wasn’t a smirk. Then I sank back into the Throne knowing I was safe and in good hands and the rest was really nothing more than a blur.

  CHAPTER 14

  Consciousness swam back into my life slowly and achingly. I found that I was lying on a rather comfortable bed, though, in a cozy little dimly lit room. A machine next to the bed displayed what I could tell were my vitals, but though I could read and write Alartaw as fluently as the next, it was no more than mumbo jumbo to my untrained eye, but I gathered I was going to live, anyway. My chest had been bandaged up and when I pulled the blanket down that was covering me I found that I was completely nude.

  “Oh.” Said a voice from the other side of the room.

  As I turned to look to see who the voice belonged to a stunningly beautiful young girl stepped up to my bed and began pulling off her clothes.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, a bit reluctantly, I must admit.

  “I’m a Royal concubine.” She giggled, her clothes falling to the floor.

  “Not anymore you’re not!” A voice snapped from the doorway. Meerla.

  It was a good thing she had shown up just then, I thought. A man only possesses so much strength, and in my weakened state . . .

  Anyway, when did our relationship become monogamous? When did it become a relationship, for that matter? Oh yeah, I supposed I had told her she would be Empress!

  I still didn’t see how that equated to monogamy? She had always been my strong right hand, sharing our power even if I retained ownership of Last Chance. Making her Empress was no more than a furtherance of the system we had already had in place, but the sex was a new factor and one I saw still had some issues to be worked out.

  “Get out!” Meerla growled at the girl, who didn’t even look at me for verification but just gathered up her clothes and did as she was told, running from the room terrified.

  “I’ve never seen such a pitiful display.” Meerla said. “Lady Luck was sure looking over your shoulder yesterday.”

  “I got the job done, didn’t I?”

  “You should have let me handle it. If you had lost it wouldn’t have just been your life you were losing.”

  “I had it under control.” I growled peevishly, getting angry.

  “You don’t think I could have handled him?” Meerla asked seriously, divining the truth. “How sweet. You thought you were saving my life, but you can’t believe I would have offered if I wasn’t sure I could have prevailed. How long have you known me?”

  That truth didn’t require an answer. If she couldn’t have done it she wouldn’t have offered, but I’d no previous knowledge she could handle steel. She was wearing the sword she had pulled from my shoulder (or one identical to it, but knowing her sense of humor it must have been one and the same, and no wonder the concubine had been terrified), I now noticed, as well as a huge blast pistol. She reached across herself and snatched the blade from its scabbard and began spinning the blade around her so quickly I was afraid one slip up would end up costing one of us an arm or leg, or a head, but it was immediately obvious she really was a master. Her movements were liquid and perfect yet completely controlled, though a style completely different than the one Krazdop had shown.

  “O.K. You’re an expert.” I admitted. “But I would still have looked a fool letting you do my fighting.”

  “No!” Meerla contradicted me. “It would have been the greatest insult you could have given him! Then, after I’d beaten him, it would have emphasized the point that he was unfit to rule.”

  “I think I made the point clearly enough.”

  “You barely survived.”

  “I fought a sword with a knife.”

  “Which was very lucky for you. Or do you know how to handle a sword?”

  “Shut up.” I said without emphasis. Sometimes there was just no winning an argument with Meerla, and this was one of those times. “I did save your neck.”

  “You got my neck into it in the first place.”

  I changed the subject. “Who decided I shouldn’t go in a doc?”

  “Oh, this is a doc. Only your skin hasn’t been healed. So you can scar properly. It’ll be a nice one, too.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want a scar.”

  “Maybe you weren’t awake to say so.”

  Would I ever learn? “Well what do we do now? What does an Emperor do?” I was genuinely puzzled.

  “He takes care of the Empress.” Meerla said wickedly, now shedding her own clothing. There was no rest for the wicked, I could see that.

  I learned quickly what it meant to be Emperor. I taxed the people excessively (and there were a lot of Alartaw to tax), lived like a God, and had whatever I wanted without paying for it, even though with all the taxes I collected I could certainly afford to. That was the system in place, in any case, when I was handed the reins. That was the system, in any case, and it made living near the Royal Palace a risky enterprise. Imagine for instance you are a wealthy Alartaw living in one of the super luxurious neighborhoods around the Palace, and the Emperor goes by and sees your yet virtuous daughter tending her flowers, and no more daughter, because she is gone, to be a concubine or slave or meat for the Emperor’s pet lizard! You didn’t have a say in the matter, not that it seemed to slow anyone from moving into these neighborhoods, apparently. Krazdop had been known to be quite brutal and I had to release thousands of girls who had been virtual slaves, some of them for immense periods of time.

  To be exact, it was Meerla who found and released them all, after the incident with the concubine in my recovery room. She did it immediately after tearing my good shoulder to shreds and leaving me bleeding in my strange new doc. The doc healed the flesh, but didn’t do anything for the scars. Those it left.

  Over the next few days I had to endure what must have been Alartaw in the millions coming to vow their allegiance while I sat in my Throne and swilled Harcled. In between were periods of brutalization at Meerla’s hands (claws) and fangs. My scar was famous and everyone wanted to see it, so I left my shirt off and sat bare chested for all to see. There was no confusion as to how I was receiving all my new scars. After a week I couldn’t take it anymore and told Naagrotod, who was never far from my side, to have everyone thrown out and to bar the gates.

  “I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.” Naagrotod said after my orders had been carried out. “I felt bad about throwing your parents out though, Sir. They had been waiting all week to see you.”

  I tried to keep my face impassive but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. What a spectacle I must have presented to my parents, so drunk day after long day that I hadn’t even noticed my mother and father waiting for me.

  I summoned my banker, a bean counter could be recognized no matter what race they belonged to, and I perused my financial situation. It was more money than could be counted. Then I asked; “How much are my parents worth?”

  It took the little bean counter a while to find the applicable records, but finally was able to show me what I wanted to see. It wasn’t paltry, but it just wouldn’t do for the Emperor’s parents. I signed over an amount that had several more zeros than a trillion, however much that was, and felt better than I had in days. Within the hour a messenger arrived with a letter from them, thanking me profusely; in fact, hordes of letters were arriving but that was the only one I allowed the staff to forward all the way to me. The only tinged of guilt I felt was for my own, real mother; would I ever see her again?

  However or whatever I was going to do wasn’t going to be accomplished with me sitting on this Throne swilling Harcled all day long. That was for sure.

  “O.K. Naagrotod,” I said, “there are some herbivores I am pretty angry with. In fact, they hav
e become a real danger to us.”

  “That’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?” Naagrotod said, chuckling. He obviously didn’t see the Kievors as the threat they really were, but he needed to understand. All Alartaw did.

  “How many Kievor Trade Stations are there, Naagrotod?” I asked sharply. I was still reclining on my Throne when I asked him, and workmen, who were constructing a twin Throne next to mine that Meerla had ordered (it never took her long to make her presence known) all stopped in their work in shock as I answered my own question. The fact of the matter was that Naagrotod, nor any other Alartaw besides Meerla and I, did not know the answer to this question. They didn’t have the slightest clue. “Close to a million, and that’s only those that I know of. I have no idea how many more there are than that, but those I know of for sure. The Kievors are an old, numerous and powerful race, and not to be underestimated!”

  All around me were staring Alartaw. Naagrotod, the workmen, and Troopers who had been close enough to hear. The news raced down the rows of Troopers, a break of military discipline I decided to ignore, given the circumstances, like a wildfire under a stiff breeze in a tinder dry forest.

  Naagrotod’s face mirrored his disbelief, so I glared at him. The look disappeared but I doubted he was yet a true believer. Well, it hardly mattered because soon they would all be believers, possibly dead ones if we didn’t act, and act decisively.

  What was my position? Would the Kievors share out their technology with everyone except humans, because humans were so close to the Alartaw? Had my easy assimilation into Alartaw society convinced the Kievors that humans could not be trusted, that we were peas in a pod. Though humans were technologically inferior to most of the races in our sector of space, we were some of the most adaptable, at the same time. Humans were advancing technologically at a rapid pace, and the Kievors might see us as much of a threat as the Alartaw themselves. The thought was too horrendous to contemplate.