Dale Mettam

by The Pub at the Center of the Universe (retail) (epub)

  The shorter of the two was watching the other patrons of the bar suspiciously and looked as if he were expecting trouble at any moment, and was ready for it. He was around four feet tall and covered in scales that suggested they would make very adequate armor should the expected trouble arise.

  The other was a taller alien and not unlike the strange alien he had followed to Sevres Prime and who’d been whisked away by the Universal Securitat, along with his reimbursement possibilities.

  The main difference was that this one had large bulbous eyes, purple hair, and a wide smile filled with small pointed teeth. All in all, Rubik suspected that if trouble did not normally arrive when the shorter one expected, his partner could be relied upon to get the ball rolling. They pulled up chairs and sat facing Rubik and the old man.

  The old man leaned close to Rubik and nodded at the smaller of the two new arrivals. “Masste Kates here is the first mate on a ship that should meet our needs.”

  “Our needs?” replied Rubik in a harsh whisper.

  “What needs?”

  Before the old man could reply, the other alien leaned forward and spoke.

  “I’m Finns Ingle, Captain of the Celestrial Egret.” He nodded sideways at his partner. “Masste here tells me you’re looking for passage to Kenturk.”

  “N...” Rubik began.

  “Yes.” The old man nodded with an encouraging smile.

  An awkward silence settled over the table. Rubik flashed looks between the old man and the two new arrivals. Ingle gave a sideways glance at his partner, then looked at the old man again, who simply continued to smile encouragingly.

  “Don’t you want to know if it’s a fast ship?” asked Ingle.

  “I’m sure it’s fast enough for our needs,” said the old man.

  “Fast ship?” Ingle seemed offended. Clearly he’d had to defend the reputation of his ship many time before. “You’ve never heard of the Celestrial...eh? What did you say?”

  “I said, I’m sure it will be fast enough for our needs,” said the old man.

  “Good. Because, it’s the ship that crossed the universe in twelve stringer jumps,” Ingle said proudly, determined to defend his ship whether it was needed or not. “Oh yeah. She’s more than fast enough for you, old man. What’s the cargo?”

  “Passengers,” the old man answered. “Myself and the boy.”

  “And the two droids, right?”

  “The boy here has an F.R.B.,” the old man said, nodding sideways at Rubik.

  “No droids, then?”

  “None.”

  “At all? asked Ingle as he sat back from the table trying to work out what was exactly going on here. His expression said it all. Didn’t these guys know how to do this? There were traditions to be upheld. Right and wrong ways to do this. Clearly the old man and Rubik had no respect for tradition.

  “I have an F.R.B., if that helps?” said Rubik.

  Ingle gave a weary glance over at his partner, who simply rolled his eyes and went back to looking for trouble.

  “Okay.,” said Ingle with a slightly defeated sigh.

  “So it’s just the two of you and one F.R.B.”

  “Exactly,” grinned the old man.

  “But I bet you don’t want any questions asked, right?” Ingle gave them a knowing grin, accompanied by a slow, deliberate wink.

  “What kind of questions?” asked the old man.

  “What?” Ingle looked at his partner for support, but only received a confused shrug.

  “What kind of questions?”

  “It’s... wel...,” Ingle looked around for help, but none was forthcoming. Worse still, the old man leaned forward a little, still grinning, and seemingly willed Ingle to find whatever words he was looking for. “Y’know...like...AH HAH! Yes! This! What is it? Some kind of local trouble? Those kinda questions!”

  The stringer pilot sagged back to what he felt was a traditional negotiating point.

  “Oh, you mean along the lines of whether or not we’d like to avoid the attention of the authorities?” asked the old man.

  “Exactly!” Ingle grinned and leaned in again, lacing his fingers and resting his hands on the table top. “And it’s gonna cost you. Ten thousand. All in advance.”

  “What?” exclaimed Rubik, who had no idea what was going on, but knew a bad deal when he heard one. “We could buy our own ship for that!”

  “But who’s going to fly it? challenged Ingle. “You?”

  “Well no,” replied Rubik.

  Ingle flashed him a triumphant grin.

  “Because I don’t really want to hire you.,” Rubik said.

  “But...” Ingle said, pointing at the old man.

  Things were slipping again.

  The old man placed a calming hand on Rubik’s arm. “We can pay you two thousand now and fifteen when we reach Kenturk.”

  “Seve..” Rubik exploded.

  The old man held up a silencing finger.

  “But seve..”

  The old man raised his hand again.

  “But...”

  The old man turned and looked at Rubik, and a primal imperative ran through him, that firmly suggested it would be a really good idea to be especially quiet at this particular moment.

  Finns Ingle beamed a wide smile, while Masste Kate glanced around the room and glared at the jukebox in the corner, almost willing it to attack.

  “Look like you boys got yourself a ship,” Ingle grinned. “The Ingrit is in orbit, fully charged and ready to drop as soon as we lay in the coordinates. We’ll be at docking bay 64 for the ride up there as soon as you’re ready.”

  The captain and his first mate left.

  Rubik turned to the old man, who smiled innocently back at him.

  “Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on here?”

  “Certainly.” The old man grinned. “You are a long way from home. You need help getting there. I am traveling myself and felt that I should help you along the way.”

  “But I don’t live on Kenturk! Why would I want to go there? I don’t even like Kenturkee Fried Chicken!”

  “Really?” The old man seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Really,” assured Rubik.

  “Well, answer me this. What other options do you have open to you at this moment in time?”

  “Well,” began Rubik, but he couldn’t think of anything to continue with.

  “Then you may as well come with me to Kenturk,” said the old man, standing. “It isn’t like I even expect you to pay.”

  “And about that,” replied North Rubik, following the old man, who was surprisingly swift. “Seventeen thousand, for a one way trip?”

  The old man opened the door to the bar, and noise from outside filtered gently in. “Seventeen?” he asked, a look of confusion on his face.

  “Yes,” replied Rubik, who was now wondering if it was possible to get away from this old man who was quite obviously deranged. “Two thousand, plus fifteen thousand is seventeen thousand.”

  The old man smiled again as if preparing to share a secret joke.

  “But I didn’t promise that. I offered two thousand now, and fifteen when we arrive. Two thousand, and fifteen, come to two thousand, and fifteen. Now come on”

  The old man slipped quickly through the door.

  Rubik sagged. The old man wasn’t deranged, but he was crazy. And they were heading to the planet Kenturk and would likely as not become chicken feed when they couldn’t pay the price Finns Ingle was expecting. But then, all things considered, his options were only slightly better if he stayed here, and after the way the old man made him shut up earlier, perhaps there was more hidden in those faded robes than met the eye.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Rubik said to himself as
he left the bar.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Once the Universal Securitat swooper was clear of Sevres Prime’s atmosphere, Lu handed the controls over to Sarge.

  “Estimated time to the U.S.S. N’Tur’Pryz is fifteen minutes and 45 seconds,” Sarge informed them. “I’ve signaled ahead and they are making final preparations. They have also dispatched two courier ships to intercept and escort us in”

  Kirk stared out at the stars and realized again just how far away from home he really was. He was also a little surprised that he no longer felt quite so overawed by the idea of being in the situation he now found himself. For all of the strangeness he was now immersed in, he felt something that he had never, in all his adult life, felt before. He had a purpose. That something missing had been found.

  It wasn’t like he knew what it was that had been missing from his life to that point. Only that something was. There had been a hole that nothing else had ever been able to fill. Now it seemed to have found him. An no matter what he faced that might prove beyond his capacity to handle, the fact remained that he now felt this is where he was supposed to be. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. This offered a reassurance allowing him to go forward.

  He noticed several String freighters in various high orbits around Sevres Prime, and they were all in various stages of preparing for their next journey.

  He supposed that some had been there when he arrived, but there had been so much to take in his senses had been overloaded. Probably some defense mechanism, or perhaps it was the F.R.B. attempting to compensate and acclimatize him to this new environment, only allowing so much information in at once. Whatever the case, he found there was something strangely beautiful in almost everything new. Even the stringers, with their increasingly bloated energy balls, swelling behind or beneath them, seemed to be as elegant as they were imposing.

  “Thanks.”

  Kirk let his thoughts slide at the interruption from Lu. He turned to look at her, curious as to why she should be thanking him.

  “For requesting me,” she said.

  “I was serious,” he replied. “I know you. Okay, as well as I know anyone out here, but I know I can rely on you. I know you won’t let anything get in the way of my succeeding in this mission. And if this restive Pro is as good as the Chief said, then I want the best person I can find as my back-up,”

  Lu smiled weakly.

  “She has beaten me before,” Lu whispered.

  Kirk studied Lu as she monitored the controls too carefully. He saw something in her he had never noticed before: Uncertainty.

  “Look. I... If...” began Kirk, but he wasn’t sure where to go after that, and the sentence hung in the air, incomplete.

  Kirk turned and watched the controls himself, taking occasional sidelong glance at Lu.

  The it hit him. He recognized her. “Stephanie Ransom!” he exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “That’s who you look like. I used to work with Stephanie Ransom at my first job. I had the biggest crush on her...” Kirk stopped and thought about it.

  “You...you aren’t Stephanie Ransom are you? I mean? She wan’t...well... you... all along? An alien?”

  Lu smiled, and this time Kirk could see there was something more to it than a brave front. She shook her head, no.

  “I think,” Lu said, turning her seat to face Kirk. “Since we’re now officially partners, there are a few things I should tell you. Make sure you know as much about me as I know do about you.”

  “You mean like what the deal is between you and Restive Pro?” Kirk asked.

  “That,” said Lu, “As well as why I look like your friend Stephanie Ransom. I have a feeling we might well face some things that for me will be memories long since buried, and for you, things that would be better heard from me now. In a calm moment rather than revealed in the heat of battle where they could do great harm to us both.”

  Kirk turned his seat to face Lu. “Okay, tell me everything.”

  She did.

  The Prion Lord High Minister was really starting to worry. He considered worry to be his natural state, so in and of itself, this was nothing new. While the Lord High Grand Provost did have concerns, they tended to be on a more grand level, whereas the Prime Minister was very much detail person. He worried about everything.

  To many, this kind of stress-filled life would be intolerable, but to him, it was the norm. In a way, it was even reassuring. When the Provost declared war on the surrounding systems many years before, and swept to victory, first on Enon, and then on a series of successfully larger civilizations, the Prime Minister began to plan. He was the kind of man people referred to as a forward thinker. He saw quickly that while the Empire expanded and consumed other civilizations, they also lost many Prions in the battles they fought.

  While the number of systems comprising the Prion Empire expanded at a steady rate, the number of citizens was decreasing..

  He took it upon himself to initiate a manner in which the Provost could accomplish his plans for domination and expansion, while also ensuring that the citizens of the empire expanded at the same rate.

  When the war began, the objective was simple. The Prion armada would attack, then ground troops would swiftly follow, ensuring that any defensive capability their enemies possessed were negated rapidly. Then the Prions would be free to do what they were genetically predisposed to do. Convert the conquered into more Prions and thus expand their empire with more of their species, rather than another race, which could eventually rebel against the authority of their occupiers.

  When the Provost came to see this as a flawed plan, the Prime Minister wanted to ensure that he would be able to present a viable solution.

  That time came after a crushing defeat for the Prion armada. The Prion resources were stretched too thin. The Prions lost many of their number in their conquests of other planets. But they also killed, inevitably, many of those they attacked and would have ultimately becomes Prions themselves. Most costly, however, was that in attacking and destroying an enemy’s defensive capabilities, they were also destroying offensive capabilities that they themselves could use later.

  The solution had been simple as far as the Prime Minister was concerned, though he had been nervous about proposing it to the Provost. His leader was intent on expansion and dominance of the entire universe. And the Provost, while being a fierce and cunning warrior, was lacking in the more subtle arts of diplomacy, or for planning anything other than battles. Anything that did not directly benefit his empire and make a serious mess of his enemies was an anathema to the Provost.

  The suggestion that the Prions surrender was greeted with outrage by the Provost. Which is why the Prime Minister ensured that it was presented to the Provost by five successive Ministers of War (who all ceased to be Minister of War immediately after offering the suggestion to the Provost -- primarily because they ceased to be at all). Once the seed of the plan was planted, and it was relatively safe for him to broach the subject without being instantly killed, the Prime Minister presented his plan. It was simple in the extreme.

  Prions are genetically able to manipulate the DNA of any other race. They were created for that purpose alone, for their ability to adapt and refine the emerging species seeded across the universe. But when the Y’lem no longer required their skills, the Prions became the pariahs of the Universe. They needed to be close to those they wished to alter, and thus far, the obvious way to do this was war and then subjugation. What the Prime Minister proposed was offering a flag of peace. That the Prions appear humble and remorseful, offering to assist all those they previously hurt. Once this offer was accepted, they would be invited into the bosom of those they had tried to break into previously. Not only would they be free to expand, they could do so a little or no cost to the existing Prion Empire and would acquire everything they needed to
further boost the aims of the Provost.

  By the time anyone knew enough to attempt a rebellion, or to ask for help from outside, they were usually too far under the control of the Prions on their world to do anything but announce they had willingly joined the Prion Empire.

  It was a slow process. Much slower than the war of aggression that had raged for so many years. But it was much more effective, and once the Provost saw just how effective, he endorsed the plan whole heartedly. However, now free of planning war and battles, the Provost was at a loose end, so turned to the one thing driving him beyond anything else. His desire for revenge. Revenge against the Y’lem.

  At first, the Prime minister encouraged this. The Provost’s war had been costly to the Prions, and while the empire did grow, it had done so at a great cost to the people. If the Provost wanted to focus on revenge fantasies, that was fine with the Prime Minister.

  The Y’lem were too powerful to be in any serious danger from the Provost, and while he was distracted, the Prime Minister could carry on running the Empire unhindered.

  Then he remembered with a shudder the day he heard the Provost had extended a invitation to the Y’lem. Worse still, they accepted, in the spirit of reconciliation.

  The Provost had determined that the time was right to attack the Y’lem. But the truth was, in the Prime Minister’s opinion, there would never be a right time for such an offensive. The only thing giving him even the slightest piece of mind was that he and his scientific advisors had developed a new method of converting other races into Prions in a manner allowing retention of selected original species abilities if they benefited the Empire.

  In hindsight, it was a mistake to allow the Provost to indulge her personal vendetta. But this was difficult for the Prime Minister to recognize since he was a man of no ambition whatsoever. He was not without goals or targets he felt would be in the best interest of the Empire, but they neither defined nor drove him onwards. He never considered failure, because what he saw as tasks to accomplish were things that should just be. Simple logic dictating what should obviously be and what should not. He saw himself merely as a tool in the process.