Jim Cartwright- Raknar Quest
Page 8
For millennia, the copper was mined by robots, which didn’t worry about the environmental impact—especially when the Great Galactic War broke out. The pace of mining increased to meet demands, and the oceans died, along with all advanced life within them. A few algae and simple organisms adapted or were helped to adapt.
Boosh became a Raknar staging location late in the war after the Valley of Loss. It was nothing more than an improvised place to prepare them for battle and repair them afterward. The Canavar landed by the Kahraman ended everything and killed everyone. Just another casualty in the war; barely a footnote.
Only now, millennia later, a trading consortium was operating some of the ancient mines. It didn’t pay much; copper wasn’t terribly valuable. However, they’d been advertising Raknar parts and even complete Raknar. Jim found the listings on the GalNet without much more than some ancient publicity shots of shiny new Raknar. It reminded him of a used car sales ad back on Earth—caveat emptor. Still, like the Aethernet, there were customer reviews. Good and bad, mostly bad. It was enough to merit a stop, Jim guessed.
“We going down,
“Not yet,” Jim said. After K’o, he wasn’t as eager to stick his dick into a meatgrinder without first checking to see if it were plugged in. He hoped he could do most of the work from orbit.
Once Pale Rider slid into a parking orbit, Jim took a good look around. No more than eight ships were in evidence. It appeared two of them were disabled or awaiting repairs. Emerald Sea only possessed a common ring of satellites, good for surveillance and weather monitoring, and no orbital installations. The other ships were traders, waiting silently.
As Pale Rider orbited, the operational ships all scanned her without comment, the same as Jim had done to them. Sparsely populated areas, spaces without any meaningful government for protection, or ones operated by consortiums, were places pirates often operated. The Union tried to keep them down to some degree. Peacemakers hunted pirates, as did the Cartography Guild, by hiring mercs.
“Keep a close eye on our neighbors,” he instructed Splunk. She nodded and a new Tri-V opened up on the bridge showing the ship’s weapons and defensive systems. “But let’s play dead.” She put the reactor on low power and placed everything except radio and sensors on standby.
Jim waited and watched as they orbited twice around Emerald Sea. As the planet rotated below them, Jim recorded everything the ship saw with its sensors, radio signals, radar returns, and radiation sources. He logged habitation in seven places, most of them with no more than a few thousand people, though one on the edge of the largest ocean was closer to a million. It matched the GalNet records and was identified as Midori, the Japanese word for green. Creative.
After the second orbit, he finally found a data link to Midori. It was not powerful, and on a frequency Jim considered poor at best. High megahertz was easily disrupted and didn’t penetrate the planet’s ionosphere well. He established a link with it and used an isolated terminal to begin communicating.
He spent hours trying to find someone to deal with. All the while his hopes decreased steadily.
“This is the Gheka Consortium. You speak to Rooka.”
“Greetings, Rooka. I’m looking for Raknar.”
“Raknar!” the alien voice said. “Yes, we have much!”
The translator said he was speaking to an elSha, though the radio signal didn’t have the bandwidth to handle visual transmission. He imagined one of the gecko-like aliens with various piercings and tattoos, twirling a knife between two fingers and with a toothpick in his mouth.
“Sure, I’ve seen your GalNet advertisement.”
“Best credits I ever spent! Come down, we deal.”
“Your ad wasn’t overly specific,” Jim persisted. “Can you send me some images of what you have?”
“Sure, sure. Wait one.” A second later the stressed connection began receiving visual images. They were staticky and at a low resolution—no more than five megapix. Even in the late 20th century, the pics would have been considered pathetic.
“Rooka, I need to see more.”
“What more you want? I not recognize you race, but we deal. All welcome.”
Jim’s eyes narrowed. They were about to orbit beyond line-of-sight of the city. “We’re orbiting out of range, speak again in eleven minutes.” He cut the connection. “Splunk, when we come around, can you see if you can find the location where the signal originates?”
She flashed him a thumbs up, and he nodded. Merc commanders tended to develop a sixth sense for anything fishy. At least, the ones who survived did. Jim knew his instincts were still being honed, so the fact that this situation smelled bad must mean it smelled really bad.
The city orbited back into view, and Rooka instantly called him again, which didn’t surprise Jim at all.
“Are you there? We’re running a special!”
“I’m here,” Jim said.
“I didn’t get your name.”
“Colonel Cartwright,” Jim replied. “I need images of your stocks. Current images.”
“Let me see what we have.”
A minute ticked by and he looked at Splunk who was busy with the ship’s instruments. The comm buzzed and a pair of new images came in. Jim looked over and his eyes got wide. It was two views of a Raknar, and it looked good. Not an old image of a Great War era machine, but one which was obviously old. It didn’t look new; it looked aged yet maintained. Yes! He was about to tell Splunk they were landing when she chirped and pointed.
The central Tri-V showed the city of Midori in all its less than glory, a chaotic mishmash of avenues and dilapidated buildings. Splunk had put a flashing green target icon on the map. As he watched it zoomed in to show a pair of small buildings and a large area of wreckage. It zoomed again and Jim saw the wreckage was mostly trashed tanks, fliers, a few shuttles, and what remained of a single Raknar.
Jim turned to look at the images Rooka sent, his eyes slits of suspicion. He called up a series of analytics programs and tore apart the image. He removed the first couple of layers and immediately the picture started to feel familiar. Another layer revealed it was a reconstruction and was rotated partially. Of course it felt familiar; the image was of his own Raknar, Dash.
“Mother fucker,” Jim snarled.
“Sorry, Jim Cartwright, I didn’t catch that,” Rooka replied.
Jim muted the radio. “Detailed analysis of the city, look for any more Raknar,” he told Splunk who immediately went to work. A second later she shook her head.
“No more Raknar, and no room to have them,
“Jim Cartwright, if you land now we make you very special deal.”
Splunk’s continued analysis showed the scrap yard had one thing interesting—a dozen old starship-class laser weapons mounted around a landing area. The old junk shuttles made sense now. Likely their previous owners also wrote the good reviews. It was just a damned trap.
“Break orbit,” Jim said disgustedly. “Low power so they can’t track us.”
Using its ion drive, Pale Rider pushed out of orbit. Jim guessed Rooka made several more great offers to get him down on the planet, but he didn’t care. He’d turned the radio off as his ship headed for the stargate.
As Pale Rider coasted away from Emerald Sea, another ship dropped toward it. The new ship fell into orbit and was immediately contacted by the Gheka Consortium.
“Jim Cartwright, why have you not come down?”
“Where is Jim Cartwright?” the new ship demanded.
“You are not Jim Cartwright? Our mistake. Welcome to the Gheka Consortium, can I interest you in new Raknar?”
“Repeat, where is Jim Cartwright?”
“How should we know? He was supposed to come down and buy a Raknar. Instead he apparently left. How about you? Can we sell you anything?”
The new ship paused just long enough to release a dozen missiles before boosting out
of orbit. Nobody was listening to the screams of Rooka as the Gheka Consortium turned into nuclear fire. The ship headed for the stargate, which had already transited Pale Rider into hyperspace.
* * * * *
Chapter Four
Pale Rider moved silently through the infinite white of hyperspace; only the non-stop thrum of her dual fusion plants broke Jim Cartwright’s reverie. With two power plants, both ran at 50% and the computer carefully monitored their output. Should one falter, it would be taken offline and the other instantly moved to 100%. The little clock he kept in his pinplants counted down the time until the ship would emerge at his destination.
His scheduler reminded him he’d missed his morning workout. He blinked and sighed. His cabin, the captain’s cabin just behind the bridge, was cluttered with dozens of floating Raknar chips. Splunk floated to one side with a tiny slate and several of the chips she’d obtained from the Caretaker on K’o. They’d both been working to access them and still weren’t having any success.
“This one bad, too,
“Yes, please do,” Jim answered. He looked from the Tri-V displaying a Raknar module to the companionway aft of the ship, considering. After a moment, he pushed off in that direction. “I’m going to go exercise.” Splunk grunted, already immersed in her analysis.
One of the things his grandfather added was a gravity deck—an extendable ring which held three compartments and spun around the center of the ship. Passengers could access them by three tubes, climbing down ladders, with the gravity slowly increasing until it peaked at the bottom. One compartment was the galley and meeting room, another was a small infirmary, and the final held a gymnasium.
Once in the gym, he selected the list of routines from his pinplants matching the day of the week. A minute later, he was on the treadmill trundling along and huffing at four kilometers per hour.
His friend and XO, Hargrave, had put him on this routine a couple of years ago during his first trip off Earth. Jim had weighed a good 50 pounds more then and, while he still had a long way to go, he felt better now. As a bonus, he could fight more efficiently in a CASPer. He didn’t manage to exercise every day it was scheduled, which annoyed him. It was too easy to make excuses. Of course, he never would have tipped the scales at close to 200 kilograms in the first place if he enjoyed exercising.
He usually listened to music while working out. Led Zeppelin, Queen, Quiet Riot, Nirvana, Drowning Pool. His choices were pretty eclectic—mostly 20th and early 21st century stuff. He even threw in a little classical music, as the Tortantulas had found out some time ago. The treadmill routine was designed to speed up and slow down, increasing the incline as well, to simulate a run on Earth.
As he huffed and puffed, he thought about Raknars. He’d never heard of the giant mechs until just a few years ago. During one of the first contracts the Cavaliers had completed after he’d taken command, their employer had been unable to pay the full fee for protecting an industrial target. As partial compensation, they’d offered a pair of Raknars. Of course, being in love with shows about giant robots from the 20th century, Jim had jumped at the opportunity. Hargrave had been less enthusiastic.
He remembered his first battle in a Raknar when they were cornered on an alien planet and outgunned. Jim had used one of the Raknars to defeat a small army of Tortantulas. The Raknar had been pretty chewed up in the fight, but then the enemy had unveiled a considerably more powerful weapon—their Canavar. Jim had used the second Raknar to defeat the giant alien monsters. This was ironic as the Dusman had once used them for the same purpose…over 20,000 years ago.
Understanding why the Raknar were abandoned had proven to be a serious challenge. Thanks to his girlfriend, Adayn, he thought he knew why—the glowing goo they’d found in one of the two, and Splunk. Unfortunately, knowing what the components were and knowing how they worked were two different things.
The goo defied analysis. He’d quietly had a lab look at it, and they said it was akin to some biological healing gels available in the Union. It also had some surprising conductive factors. It still wasn’t enough to explain what it was doing in the Raknar. When put into a Raknar it also made more of itself, if the Raknar had power. The other thing was Splunk. She was even more enigmatic than the goo. Her producing a rifle a couple weeks ago didn’t help his concerns about her.
The Valley of Loss on K’o had been his greatest hope when leaving Earth, which was why he’d gone there first. It seemed a good possibility he’d find some quality information on both maintaining his own Raknar and either making or restoring more.
He’d been wrong. There had been nothing there but thousands of scavengers selling salvaged tech. They’d freaked out and tried to kill him. Despite being hot from the exercise he shivered to think about what might have happened if it hadn’t been for Splunk. Plus, she’d stolen the ancient data chips.
After a wasted stop at Emerald Sea, he was even more convinced his path wasn’t going in the right direction. The stop there had been nothing more than a disgusting waste of time. Jim hoped the jerk Rooka and his little pirate operation picked the wrong people to mess with some day. Maybe he’d drop by with his Cavaliers and take care of the bastard himself.
The treadmill’s alarm chimed, and both the incline and speed increased. He was in the last quarter of the workout. This was where he always faltered. The music on his pinplants pounded out a beat to match the section of the run. At the midpoint of the grade, he stopped, gasping for breath. Shit.
Jim switched from the treadmill to the rowing machine. Then, after ten minutes of weights, he took a break and used a towel to clean off the sweat. It had a tendency to pool in annoying places in the low gravity of the rotating deck. He grabbed a drink of water before continuing. As he worked, star maps revolved through his pinplants, and his plans with them. Originally, he had planned to visit several syndicates in the region who’d hinted at having Raknars. His results on Emerald Sea had changed his mind.
He configured the weight machine to an upper body selection. After 15 minutes working muscles he’d ignored most of his life, his arms were so tired they quivered as if they had electricity running through them. He’d also made up his mind.
Pale Rider emerged from hyperspace 14 hours later, and Jim directed the ship straight to the system’s stargate. As soon as it cycled, he transmitted payment and was back in hyperspace.
* * *
“We’ll need fuel,
“I know,” Jim said. He’d noticed the reading himself on the pre-emergence checklist. Like most hyperspace capable starships, Pale Rider used reaction mass for many things. Usually just referred to as fuel, it was basically water, though a fairly wide variety of liquids could be used with varying efficiency. Whatever the fuel, it was purified and fed into the fusion core to feed the reactor. There it was broken up to provide oxygen and water for the crew, or just pumped into the fusion torch for propulsion.
The Tri-V displayed a near-vicinity star map. Their last destination was on the periphery of a galactic arm, the current destination, Kikai, in the center. It was flashing a dynamic text warning, something only stars presenting danger or special concern did.
“Not safe,
Gee meant fear, and Splunk wasn’t afraid of many things. She’d shown fear of the robot they’d fought on Karma Upsilon 4, yet no
fear of the towering Canavar. In fact, she rejoiced at the chance to destroy the monsters.
“I know,” he said, “but it’s one of our best bets.” Before we go to the heart of it all. There was a sudden feeling of falling, and the stars reappeared. “Wow!” he said as he looked out from the bridge. Like K’o, the stellar density here was much higher than Earth. Unlike K’o, it was even higher where they were now. A hundred million. Billions! “So, this is what the Core looks like,” he said in amazement. The center of the galaxy, filled with ancient stars and equally ancient civilizations. The comms system buzzed, and he used his pinplants to accept the message.
“Welcome to the Kikai system,” his translator said, rendering the growled language into English, including the English word for the star. “This system is known as the Machine Empire by its inhabitants and is under the protection of the Peacemaker Guild. Transmit identification and state your purpose.”
“A Peacemaker?” Jim asked in surprise. Splunk looked at him, her ears straight up in interest as well. He’d heard enough about Peacemakers to know compliance was the smartest option, so he slid his yack into Pale Rider’s radio and pressed “Ident.” In case the Peacemaker didn’t have English programmed into its translator, Jim instructed his pinplants to render the speech into the alien’s language.
“I am here on commerce.”
The reply came promptly. “A Human mercenary,” the Peacemaker said. “One of the Four Horsemen, even.”
“You know about the Four Horsemen?” Jim asked. “All the way in the Core?”
“There are only thirty-seven mercenary races, Human, if we count yours. I happen to have met a few Humans and know about your Four Horsemen.”
Jim nodded. He supposed it made a certain amount of sense. He was still amazed because the galaxy was so damned big, and humanity was such a small player. “May I pass?” he asked. As the seconds ticked by, Jim looked at the helm controls and considered heading toward the base without waiting for permission. Splunk glanced at him out of the corner of her big eyes and tapped the Tri-V controls.