Rogue Pilot
Page 1
Rogue
Pilot
Will Macmillan Jones
First edition 2018 by Red Kite Publishing Limited
www.redkitepublishing.net
Text Copyright 2018 by Will Macmillan Jones
Will Macmillan Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying or recording, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Find out more about the author on www.willmacmillanjones.com
ISBN-13: 978-1986464208
CONTENTS
Other book:
1
Chapter One
Pg 5
2
Chapter Two
Pg 25
3
Chapter Three
Pg 45
4
Chapter Four
Pg 55
5
Chapter Five
Pg 72
6
Chapter Six
Pg 90
7
Chapter Seven
Pg 131
8
Chapter Eight
Pg 169
9
About the Author
Pg 171
Other books by Will Macmillan Jones
Paranormal Mysteries
The Mister Jones Collection
The Showing 2014
Portrait of a Girl 2015
The House Next Door 2016
The Curse of Clyffe House 2016
Demon’s Reach 2017
Childrens Books
Snort and Wobbles 2014
Return of The Goblins 2015
Fantastically Funny Fantasy:
The Banned Underground Collection
Too many to list!
See www.thebannedunderground.com
Chapter One
The Cat from Catalonia stared at me. His dark, feline, eyes were inscrutable over the cards concealed from my view. I glanced down at my hand. Two Aces and two Queens. I looked the Cat squarely in the eyes, and smiled.
“I’ll raise you,” he said.
“Done.”
We both pushed some money onto the pile in the middle of the table. Another Cat, sitting between us, made a disgusted sound and threw his hand down.
“Out,” he hissed, and showed the large incisors of his kind. My left hand dropped to my knee.
“Both hands on the table during the game.” The house security bouncer leant towards me, and tapped the table with one huge finger. I raised my hand, and both the Cats relaxed in a way that revealed how they had tensed at my movement.
“Sorry,” I apologised. “Just an itch. Probably a bite.”
The Cats around the table hissed at that. My eyes never left the Cat still holding the cards. I could hear a supressed giggle or chuckle from the humanoids and others also around the table. The tension rose again. These were not great cards, but I was better at bluffing than the other players had been. Except, possibly, for this Cat. I couldn’t remember his name, and probably couldn’t have pronounced it if I had.
He leaned back, without releasing my gaze, raised the glass on the table in front of him and half sipped half lapped at the drink. Slowly he replaced it on the table.
“Well, Frank?” The Cat’s voice was smooth, sibilant and dangerous.
“See you.” I pushed some more money onto the heap. It was the last cash that I had, so this was my last play.
“Done.” The Cat added some money.
Neither of us moved.
“Get on with it!” ordered security, moving one eye around the tense observers, looking for trouble. His other eye was also looking for trouble, it was focused entirely upon us.
Slowly, milking the tension, the Cat lifted his cards, fanned them slightly with the expertise of an experienced player, and then laid them down. “Two pairs. Kings and Jacks.”
Every eye turned towards me. I lifted the edges of my cards, and peered at them again, then flipped them over the heap of money. “Aces and Queens.”
Around there was a huge, wordless noise as the crowd exclaimed. The Cat went rigid. His eyes bored into mine. Slowly I reached across the table to gather in the cash. One of his paws slammed into the back of my hand, the claws showing just enough to be painful without causing damage. He wouldn’t do that under the direct gaze of the house security team – he might not be let back into the next game.
“You are a good gambler with the cards, Frank.”
I held his gaze, trying to swallow my fear.
“How good are you without the cards?”
“Not in here.” The voice of the bouncer was deep and rumbling, and I wondered again exactly what species he might be. “Wanna scrap, you two go outside. Better yet, outside off station.” He meant off the space station that held the drinking den and gaming rooms where we were gambling, and out into space. Where no one hears the screams and the staff do not have to waste their time disposing of inconvenient and often quite messy bodies.
“That was straight,” I told the Cat, without moving my hand from the money.
“Was it? Was it?” His claws dug a little deeper into my hand, and a trickle of blood ran down my thumb.
I was clear that the Cat was a bad loser. I, on the other hand, could be a bad winner. “You know damn well it was. There are enough watching us, including security here.” I jerked my unpinned hand at the bouncer, who was now giving the Cat a professional blank look. The one that said that violence was very close by now.
“It was fair,” sighed the other Cat at the table. “Frank won. Let him go.”
“With my money?”
“It was fair.”
The Cat rose, letting his weight fall on the paw and claws pinning my hand to the money.
“I don’t like losing, Frank.”
“Then you shouldn’t gamble,” I told him. “And get off my hand. That blood is going to stain the cash, and make it hard to spend.”
The Cat hissed again, then as the bouncer quivered in anticipation of his move, the Cat released my hand and backed away from the table. “Be seeing you, Frank,” he hissed and vanished into the pack of his own kind.
“Not if I see you first,” I muttered and started gathering up the cash from the table.
The crowd around the table thinned as the onlookers moved away, heading for one of the bars. Other payers slipped into the chairs, but I shook my head, and stepped away, leaving the most bloodstained notes in the middle of the table. “For the house,” I told the security thing. “Might need laundering.”
He did not reply, but first pointed one fat finger at the nearest CCTV camera and then one finger at the money on the table. Then he gathered it up, and dropped it into a small chute that I had not previously noticed at the side of the table.
“Your security is guaranteed for one hour,” he rumbled.
I understood. That meant that I had an hour to get a drink, or anything else that might be on sale in this interstellar bar, and get out. The chances are that Cat and his mates would be coming after me then. No one with his level of pride liked to lose so publicly, not in Cat society, so I would have no need to go looking for trouble. It would be looking for me.
I left the table. One or two of the humans around slapped me on
the shoulder, and I kept a careful watch for any pick pockets as they did so. Space is a stupyfyingly big place, and many types of people live in it. The Cats, inevitably from the Catalonia System, evolved several centuries ago. They are not easy to deal with, dangerous to cross, and have a very thin veneer of our civilisation imposed over a basically feral society. I would have to be careful while I was in the bar, and even more careful when I left.
Still, first things first. I pushed through the crowd to the bar, and ordered a number of bottles.
“No,” I said to the barman. “Don’t open them. I’m off.”
“You certainly smell bad,” agreed the Cat, whispering into my ear. His mouth was so close to my head that his whiskers tickled. I jumped so high that I could have stepped forward across the bar to escape if I had thought of it in time. Instead I landed, just where his feet should have been. Unfortunately, he had moved.
“You heard security,” I warned him.
“What have security got to do with this?” asked the Cat. He smiled, showing me a horrifying number of very sharp teeth. “This is two friends having a quiet drink after a tussle over one of their tables. Happens all the time.”
“I bet it does.”
The Cat spread his paws wide, in mock innocence. The tips of the claws gleamed in the uneven lighting. “Why Frank, do you doubt my bona fides?”
“I don’t think you even know what it means.”
The Cat sniggered, and ran his tongue over his two front teeth. I found that quite threatening. I would have stepped further back, but the press of bodies behind me stopped me. I would have liked to know if they were the rest of the party of Cats, but it was probably unwise to take my eyes off this Cat at any time.
“Let me get you a drink, Frank,” said Cat.
“Got mine already,” I told him and raised the bottles by their necks. If nothing else they would make a decent weapon.
“Tut, tut. How very ungentlemanly. We Cats are always polite to each other, did you know that?”
“Even when you are about to try and kill each other?”
“Especially then, Frank. Especially then.” Cat raised one paw at the barman, and two drinks appeared as if by magic. Cat raised one to me and waited, expectantly. I pushed two bottles into a pocket of my jacket and reached out to the glass on the bar.
“Drink in peace, then I shall walk away,” said Cat.
“Just that?” I asked. “You’ll just walk away? Leaving me with all your lovely money?”
“Enjoy it. I shall walk away.”
Reluctantly I raised the glass towards my lips. Cat copied the move.
“Down in one,” he said. “Slainte!”
“Slainte,” I toasted Cat back, and was about to knock down the drink when a hand came over my left shoulder and knocked it out of my hand.
“Told you,” rumbled the security thug from beside me. The Cat looked at security, at me, then to my other side and bowed slightly. Before I could say anything, he had gone, slipping away into the throng of drinking, arguing, scuffling customers of all shapes, sizes and species imaginable.
“Thank you,” said an urbane voice from behind my left shoulder.
“No problem, sir. Now excuse me, I need a word with this barman.” The enormous security thug vaulted easily over the bar and dragged the barman off. A fresh, indeed indistinguishable, barman took his place at once.
“Hello, Frank.”
I had been scared before. Now I was terrified. I knew the voice well. It was my old boss Colonel Rosto; officially many things but unofficially officially (if you follow me) extremely senior in The Free Union’s Security Service. More or less the head spy, but with plausible deniability and other mugs to take the fall for him. I had been one of his mugs, and had taken the fall, changing from a remunerated if not respected captain in The Free Union’s Space Corps to an unremunerated and very much unrespected fugitive with a price on my head and a number of parties interested in collecting it.
“Hello Rosto.”
Without looking round Rosto clicked his fingers at the replacement barman, and two drinks turned up immediately – a very bad sign in such a crowded bar. He was clearly well known and almost certainly feared, to get service like that. This place was officially called ‘The Star Bar’. Across the galaxy it was more colloquially known as ‘The Dogs’ Bollocks’. The name rose from the large and growing collection of such items that were nailed to the back of the bars, donated by Cats. Presumably they would be pleased to add parts of me to the grisly horde, given half a chance. A chance halved, at least, by Rosto. I suppose I should be grateful to him.
“Aren’t you going to say ’thanks’ to me?” Rosto asked.
“For what? Getting me sacked from the Space Corps and leaving me to run around the galaxy with a price on my head?”
Rosto shook his head and chuckled. “For saving your life, of course.”
“When?”
“Then. You didn’t think that drink was safe, did you? Cat drinks are very safe for Cats, but quite poisonous to us. He was going to poison you without doing anything, so security couldn’t touch him for it. Lucky for you, I was here to help.”
“Lucky?”
“I am wounded!” exclaimed Rosto theatrically. He clutched his chest, rolled his head and winked at me.
“What are you doing here, Rosto?”
“Besides saving your life? For which you still haven’t thanked me?”
“Thank you.” I looked at the place on the bar where the glass had landed. The varnish had wrinkled and distorted. “Thank you,” I repeated with a little more sincerity. “Now, what do you want?”
“You probably will not believe this, Frank.”
“You are right. I don’t believe you already.”
Rosto smiled. “It is simply a coincidence. I was just passing through, saw you chancing your luck with the Cats and sort of tagged along. Gambling with the Cats is a fools’ game, you know.”
“Yes. I do know.”
Rosto dropped even the pretense of a smile. “Then why were you doing it?”
I shoved one hand into a pocket and pulled out a fistful of notes. I waved them under his nose. “When you’ve had your income taken away from you, eating can get tough without some of this.”
Rosto had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Trade not too good then?”
Since I had become a fugitive from what passed for justice, I had been earning a bare living transporting goods with a less than secure provenance around the shadier parts of the Galaxy. To be fair, I was using the spaceship that Rosto had arranged for me to steal to do it. In that spirit, a fair description of my activity might be smuggling.
“It’s a bit tough, yes. Some of your border security guards are getting good at their jobs, and every time I cross into the Imperium, I can feel Colonel Starker’s Black Ops men looking for me.”
“Yes, he does seem to have a bit of a grudge against you, I agree.”
As the Inter Galactic Arrest Warrant that was causing me so much grief had been issued by Colonel Starker, that seemed to me to be a bit of an understatement, and I said so. But Rosto just laughed.
“Not caught you yet, Frank, has he? Still, it is nice to see you looking well and thriving. More or less.”
Rosto drained his glass and put it back on the bar, avoiding the bubbling varnish left by the Cat’s drink. I didn’t touch mine. Once bitten, twice shy, you know.
“I’m off. I would advise you not to hang around, either.”
“What do you mean by that? And you really don’t want anything from me? Or to do anything to me?”
“Only Colonel Starker wants to do anything to you, Frank. I have a piece of news for you though. He has increased the bounty on your head.”
I winced. That was just going to encourage more bounty hunters.
“On one hand though, he has created a price differential.”
I raised my eyebrows, confused. Rosto interpreted this correctly.
“The premium for
bringing you in dead is higher than for your dead body.”
“That sounds like bad news!” It could have been worse, of course.
“That,” said Rosto cheerfully, “is rumoured to come from the savings he would make as the way he is planning to have you killed is quite expensive.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Thank you so much for telling me that, Rosto.”
“Thought you’d like to know. Especially as three of his Black Ops crews have recently disembarked here.”
“What?” I the blood drained from my face and I looked around wildly.
“Oh, they haven’t made it to this deck yet. I’d say that you have a bit of time to make an escape.” Rosto checked his watch, again a theatrical gesture. “perhaps all of two minutes.
The crowd suddenly stilled and then swayed and started to move rapidly for one of the exits. Rosto waved me join them. “I’ll be seeing you, Frank.”
“Not if I see you first!”
I pushed my way into the crowd, keeping one hand on the bottles in my pocket and the other hand on the cash in my other pocket. With my head down I followed the crowd out towards the outer ring of the spacestation, where the ships were docked. Behind me, the pressure of the crowd increased as some swearing and shooting broke out. People began to run, always a bad sign. I picked up my pace, trying to stay hidden in the throng.
The entrance to the side dock where my Speedbird spaceship was docked arrived. I had to use one hand to haul myself into the doorway, as the rest of the crowd pushed past roughly. I was knocked about quite a lot, then finally broke free and fled down the short tunnel. The lights should have been bright, but as several of the bulbs were broken, patches of shadows lay deeply in the curving corridor. I hid in one of those and peered around the corner at the docking stations. There was no one in sight.
Behind me I heard shouting, of an organised and military nature. This was not good and so I threw caution to the wind and ran as fast as I could for my ship.
“There he is!” I heard someone shout.