Exiles

by Richard Alonzo

  Chapter 7 Settlement

  They made no attempt to disguise their arrival in the Icon system. The Fury dropped out of hyperspace in plain sight of the blue-green cloud shrouded ball of the Iconian home world.

  “Look at it. It looks just like that miserable rock Anobar, it’s enough to make your trigger finger itchy.” Jasper snarled, his cybernetic eye whirring and clicking irritably. The red flame of the scar running down the right side of his face twitching like an angry snake.

  “Something’s wrong.” said Alice, her black painted fingernails moving swiftly across the screen, tapping buttons and analysing the sensor data. “I’m picking up multiple weapon locks, ships, defence grid, even ground based nukes. They’ve got every weapon in the system armed and pointed at us.”

  “I’m getting a hail from the planet.” said Wilkes as a wave of light and energy rippled through his sub-dermal implant.

  Angelica shifted in her seat, arranging her blue suit and herself to emphasise her key assets, as Jackson appeared on the deck and took up his position on the command dais.

  “You’re late.” snapped Jasper.

  Jackson smile politely back at him and gestured to the blood stain on his lab coat. “My apologies, one of the test subjects we picked up in the Draconion system was quite uncooperative.”

  “Whatever.” said Jackson waving his hand at him dismissively. “And while you’re at Angelica you can put those away I doubt very much this is a hospitality call.”

  Angelica put on her very best innocent smile. “I’ve always found it can be helpful to provide a little distraction to catch the enemy off guard, beside I believe their glorious leader was rather fond of me last time we paid them a visit.”

  You had to admire the genetic engineers of the propaganda core he thought to himself, she was so good she almost fooled him at times. He turned to Wilkes. “Put the miserable rat on the hologrid so I can see him squirm.”

  A large three dimension representation of the Iconian dictator, flanked by two heavily armed bodyguards in his inner sanctum, appeared before them. The guards were in full body armour. Their white helmets black visors pulled down obscuring their faces. Brutal blunt snouted plasma rifles held stiffly at precisely forty-five degrees across their chests. The Exalted Leader for Life stood between them in full dress uniform. A somber grey outfit, whose edges were carefully etched out with gold braid. Its shoulders studded with the golden insignia of the commander in chief. His was chest a riot of colour with several rows of garish medal ribbons running across it. It was topped off by a flat grey military cap, which hid his balding pate. It was encircled by a single red band and bore the golden insignia of the Iconian forces. A golden laurel wreath overlaid with two plasma rifles, identical to the ones held by his bodyguards, crossed at exactly forty-five degrees.

  He stared out impassively from behind his amber tinted glasses. Which not only hid his cold, lifeless, blue-grey eyes, but also served to accentuate the pallor of his aged, wrinkled, skin. A grey flecked beard sat uncomfortably beneath his thin blood drained lips. Jasper focused his cybernetic eye on him, his aurora spoke of age and decay. A man who clung stubbornly to power, even though his time had passed.

  “Welcome back Jasper, we’ve been expecting you.”

  Jasper smiled coldly at him with a mixture of contempt and disgust, his scar convulsed slightly as he spoke. “Well forgive me if I don’t break out the champagne, but it’s hardly the welcome I was expecting for your all conquering hero. The man who ended the hundred year’s war in your lifetime.”

  He leaned forward. “All conquering hero?” he slammed his liver spotted fist into the finely polished wooden desk in front him. Its contents rattled in protest. “Don’t make me laugh your nothing but a failure.” he spat the final word out from between his ancient yellow teeth and let it hang in the air between them.

  “The terms of the contract were clear, disable the Draconion defences, secure their surrender, eliminate the president and hand over their system to your forces, half up front, the balance payable on completion. You owe me and my crew.” Jasper snapped back clenching his fists till his nails dug into his palms. Patience he thought, patience, all in good time.

  “Owe you, owe you? Don’t make me laugh. You were supposed to make me a hero, untouchable, worshiped by my people for ending the war. The first dictator in our history to retire of his own free will and die of ‘natural causes’ instead of being ‘retired’ by his people. Instead I can’t even trust my own bodyguards.” he pointed to the men beside him. “Not to put a bullet through my head.”

  Jasper shook his head and laughed. “Whatever you though I was going to do for you that wasn’t part of the contract. Now quit whining and pay up, your beginning to try my patience.”

  “Never.” he shouted slamming both fists into the table sending pens, pencils and other assorted items of stationary dancing across it. “Thanks to you, the occupation is bleeding us dry.”

  He picked up small black gadget from the chaos and confusion of his desk and pointed it at a screen behind him and flicked through a series of images, providing a running commentary as he went, starting with the shattered remains of Zenon-5.

  “Thanks to you their economy is crippled and so is ours, we’re importing over 90% of fuel we need to sustain the occupation, causing shortages at home.” he flicked to a series of stills of rioters on the bloody streets of the Iconian capital, finishing with a looped video of the Draconion president taking her own life. “And this, this is the Pièce de résistance. Instead of eliminating her, you’ve turned her into a bloody martyr, whose inspired a fanatical resistance movement. Hell she’s even more popular among my people than I am.” his voice rose to a crescendo leaving small droplets of spittle in his beard.

  “Well thanks for showing me the family album.” snarled Jasper. “But if you wanted to win a popularity contest you should have hired my ships propagandist. Now shut up and pay up.”

  Angelica cut in. “There’s no need for rash decisions and harsh words gentlemen. I’m sure we can still turn this situation around. The suicide of a delusional, fanatical leader leading her people to ruin against those who are trying to liberate and save them. No one should under estimate my considerable talents. Beside which Jasper our captain is a counter-insurgency expert.”

  “You can keep your ships whore away from me.” he snorted. Alice could barely suppress a little giggle. “Now I suggest you cut your losses and turn your ship around while I’m feeling generous.”

  “I never renege on a contract.” thundered Jasper. “And no one, absolutely no one, reneges on me either.”

  “Or what?” he snapped back. “We’re talking on an isolated comms link run through an redundant satellite. All our ships and weapons are firewalled with standing orders to shoot if you so much as fart without my permission. So don’t think for one moment you can pull that virus stunt you used on the Draconion’s on me.”

  Jackson nodded in Jasper's direction to confirm the truth of his statement.

  Jasper stood up and rolled his head slowly around cracking his neck as he did so. “I’m full of surprises and I won’t hesitate to take you down if I have to. My business model is based on my reputation and I won’t let you or anyone else damage it.”

  “Idle threats don’t impress me, your much vaunted Armageddon Array is safely tucked up inside your ship and you’ll be fragged beyond repair before you can deploy it.”

  Jasper laughed. “You seriously think anything in your armoury can hurt us, the Fury? This is the most powerful and deadly ship in the known universe, and I and I alone control it, you feeble, foolish, old man.”

  A thin smile crossed his lips. “Maybe I can't destroy your precious ship, the mighty dreadnought ‘Fury’, but I can sure as hell damage it.” he lent across the desk and started intently at Jasper. “When you’ve been in power as long as I have you learn a few things, so listen carefully. You’re nothing but a mercenary, your crew’s loyalty extends only as far as the n
ext pay day. Your ability to reward them and reward them well. So ask yourself this. How far will that ‘loyalty’ extend when your stolen ships crippled and in need of a dry dock that will suck up your ill gotten gains like a sponge?”

  “Further than your miserable civilisation, when I've blow back to the stone age.” snapped Jasper.

  “Well, we were already doing a pretty good job of that for ourselves before you came along Jasper. I’ve got forty-eight hours, a week left at best, before a coup topples me. Question is do you really want to fall with me?”

  A tense silence engulfed the bridge of the Fury as the seconds ticked, silently by falling into the void between the two men. Finally Jasper spoke.

  “You’re a bigger fool than you look old man, my guess is you won’t live out the day, unlike me.”

  The Exalted Leader for Life relaxed, took his hands off the desk and leaned back smiling. “I guess you’ll be leaving then?”

  Jasper nodded. “Don’t worry our paths won’t be crossing again. Wilkes turn this ship around and let’s get the hell out of here.” Wilkes nodded and executed his order. He turned to Alice and gesture to her to cut the Fury’s comm feed. “Keep monitoring the situation till we jump.”

  Alice nodded. ”It looks like their tracking us all the way out.”

  Jasper sat back in his chair massaging his temples. Angelica was about to speak when Jackson gestured to her to be silent. Jasper allowed the locks Jackson had installed on his alien wetware to fall away one-by-one, focusing all his anger and pent up frustration into his cybernetic implant as he did so. Ignoring the ship as it accelerated away from the planet. The molecular structure of its hull dissolving and melting away around him. He stretched out his consciousness across the growing void of space between them and planet. Plunging through the atmosphere, his will flowed out of the clouds and down into the crowded streets of the planets sordid little capital. Streaming over the heads of rioters, as they lobbed Molotov cocktails at heavily armed police, ignoring the guards outside the building, he burst through the doors of the Palace of the People and into the inner sanctum of the Exalted Leader.

  He latched on to the Exalted Leaders consciousness and burrowed into his mind. He had a surprisingly strong will, even if his wasted framed was aged and feeble. For some obscure reason the gene therapies that could revitalise and extend the functionality of the physical form were an anathema to their belief system. It was of no consequence to Jasper, he pushed it aside, as he probed deeper into the feeble old man’s mind and moulded it to his will. The job completed he allowed a brief smile to flicker across his lips, back on the bridge of the Fury, before turning his attention to the guards. They were simple minded thugs of the sort most dictators use and it was a straightforward exercise to switch their loyalties to the name of his most likely successor. Which lay just beneath the surface of their already faltering loyalty to the old fool. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly before taking his hands away from his head and opening his organic eye.

  “Status report.”

  “Prepping to jump now, were good to go in 15 seconds.“ said Wilkes fingers pressed against the side of his face as light and energy undulated through the filaments of his implant.

  “Wait.” interjected Alice. “I’m getting some unusual activity. That old fool has just transferred the balance of our contracted payment into the agreed holding account ready for laundering.” she looked at Jasper. “And he’s ordering his forces to stand down.”

  He shrugged and held up his hands nonchalantly. “What can I say? Never underestimate my powers of persuasion.”

  She winced and pulled a small silver earpiece from her ear. “There’s gunfire in the capital. It seems the exulted leader is exulted no more, he’s just been assassinated by his own bodyguards triggering a military coup.”

  Jasper lent back in the captain’s chair reaching his arms over his head and cracking his knuckles. “Well that ties up all the loose ends in this miserable little backwater of the galaxy, with not one but two highly profitable contracts in the bag. I say it’s time we go get some well earned R&R.”

  Angelica turned to Jasper. “Allow me to be the first to personally congratulate you on yet another successful enterprise, I’ll make sure everyone in this sector knows what happens to those who dare to cross you and the Fury.”