by S F Chapman
After years of plotting and planning, he’d snuck into the newly constructed Titan Palace as a teenager and stabbed his father to death.
Two days later, after murdering most of the old man’s advisors, Dimitri enthroned himself as the Supreme Warlord and took over the now vast fiefdom.
His father’s frozen and mutilated corpse still dangled from a tall picket in front of the palace as a grisly reminder of Dimitri’s ruthlessness.
But he had other scores to settle.
Even though he was a reluctant member of the Warlord Syndicate and continued to pay the onerous dues to the trade organization, he felt no sympathy towards the six other squabbling autocrats that made up the group. The Asteroid Belt and Jupiter Colonies Fiefdom was merely a weak and unorganized collection of a few widely spread outposts led by an oblivious figurehead Warlord on Vesta. The Fiefdoms of Mars and the Moon were both pleasant paradises compared to the difficult and isolated hell of the Outer Reaches.
Dimitri had nothing in common with the three pampered sovereigns of Earth; with large and compliant populations, copious resources and an agreeable atmosphere, they had no understanding of the adversities that Off-Worlders constantly faced.
He had an especially strong hatred for his stepbrother, Daniel Kufuzu. The EurAfrican Warlord had taken over for his vile father years ago and had refused to acknowledge Dimitri as a blood relative.
Dimitri sneered with contempt; soon he would inflect a horrible revenge on the Kufuzu family.
His own fiefdom had grown wealthier and more formidable in recent years and would soon surpass the status of Mars and rival that of IndoPacifica on the Earth.
Nearly twenty different mines and the huge new Kuiper Gas Refinement Facility produced vast riches for him. He had an army of “tax” and bribe collectors in his employ but his tireless slavers generated far more profits than his other endeavors. Dimitri’s methodical thugs would “arrest” hapless squatters in the far-flung outposts and drag them off to the Warlord’s forced labor facilities to work off trumped up debits that could seemingly never be satisfied.
Dimitri pushed his nearly empty plate aside; the last scraps would undoubtedly be consumed by his skinny little parlormaid. He chuckled to himself, she would be worth more with some meat on her bones.
He swaggered back to the window and listened to the latest message from the Butin Belle, “This is bluebird calling big boy. We are in sight of the winter house but the lightning has not arrived. Your package is ready to Air Mail but we need the address.”
Excellent, he thought, perhaps Gristle and his brain-dead First Mate could actually get things right.
Dimitri began his reply, “Use the smallest midget to deliver the package to my brother for arrival in one month. Half a klick makes the biggest noise. Have the guests work on the new products when the lightning appears.”
Saturn had nearly reached its zenith in the Titan sky.
He smiled fleetingly at the immense ringed planet before sending off the dispatch; soon his palace would be filled with fawning half-wits.
14. News Item: Lunar Lab investigation continues
Dateline: 20th of June, 2445; Free City Inquisitor's Office, Free City, Earth
Chief Inspector Helga Bennet of the Inquisitor’s Office offered an update this morning on the ongoing investigation into last month’s unexplained destruction of the Lunar Ultra Energy Research Laboratory.
Citing unnamed sources in the Mining Guild, Bennet dispelled the widely held notion that the disaster which claimed 287 lives was caused by illegal mining operations below the Sea of Crises. She also put to rest a rival theory regarding careless handling of the unstable antimatter that had been produced in great quantities at the facility in recent years. Inspector Bennet spent many minutes detailing the elaborate safety measures used by the staff of the doomed research station.
“The Inquisitor’s Office is now quite certain that the destruction of the Lab was not an accident,” the Chief Inspector said.
“We have discovered some detailed lunar surveillance images from the day of the incident and our best people are studying them very carefully for clues,” Bennet assured reporters.
When asked about possible suspects, the Chief indicated that the Inquisitor’s Office is currently seeking two persons of interest for questioning.
Bennet concluded the interview by emphasizing her confidence in the detective work being carried out by the Office.
15. Keira Norton after hours She was finally back in her minuscule Free City apartment.
Keira wearily stripped off her soiled eveningwear and slumped in despair onto her unmade sofa bed. She was alone in her dim apartment, which certainly wasn’t how she had imagined the date with Lev would end.
She sighed in frustration. The tantalizing spark of attraction that they had shared together in the dark School of Physics workroom had been largely extinguished in her mind by the disastrous outing.
Keira crawled under the rumpled covers and began to methodically review the star-crossed date.
She’d met Lev hours earlier at a period-themed nightspot called the Waimea Surf Society and Bar. The establishment was well known for its collection of ancient and obscure dance music. To her dismay, most of the other women at the club were attired in glitzy and revealing swimwear while she had come sensibly clad in a subdued woolen frock entirely appropriate for the drizzly evening weather.
Even though Lev was outfitted in colorful beach shorts and a flashy Polynesian shirt, he assured her that she would fit in with the high-spirited crowd.
More than a few other revelers had scoffed disapprovingly in her direction during the evening.
An hour into the rendezvous, after consuming far too much alcohol in a back booth with Lev, she’d been cajoled into venturing out onto the dance floor.
It was the lone pleasurable interlude of the evening, Keira realized.
She’d clung drunkenly to him during a seductive and swirlingly slow instrumental. Her hands crept up his muscled back and glided through his soft black curls. Even now, hours later, Keira could recall his inviting scent.
But eventually the song and the intimate erotic fantasy ended.
Keira had held him close for far too long when the sedate instrumental was replaced by a snappy song. Lev twirled apart from her with an embarrassed grin. While the others around her bounced and spun to the catchy tune, Keira stood alone in jilted disbelief.
The ditzy lyrics were still stuck in her head, “and she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T’bird away.”
Lev coaxed her into dancing again but it wasn’t the same. As she tried to keep up with the energetic crowd, the lyrics seemed to mock her many missteps and blunders, “You look like ace now, you look like an ace....”
The jostling and gyrating had caused the excess of alcohol in her stomach to make itself painfully known. When it had threatened to spew out, Keira sprinted away to the lavatory in panic.
As she huddled over the commode vomiting, she could hear the revelers on the dance floor stomping and cheering at the end of the ancient surf song.
She cleaned herself up and crept back to their booth.
To her horror, she watched from the distant vantage point as Lev merrily danced with a plump blonde woman who popped repeatedly out of her too-tight bikini bra.
Why had he abandoned her for some trollop at the first signs of trouble?
When the tune ended, Lev beckoned to her to join them but Keira shook her head in dread. She certainly didn’t want to risk being cast by the catty regulars as the dowdy chick that retched all over the dance floor.
Perhaps she had imagined the little glint of understanding in Lev’s eyes as he stood there. After several seconds of staring at her from across the dance floor, he trotted back to her.
“This is Desiree!” He had tugged the sparsely clad woman to the booth with him, “Des was my first housemate and I haven’t seen her in months!”
Lev slid into the booth and gestur
ed for Desiree to join them. The heavyset beach babe complied.
“Des this is Keira. Keira this is Desiree.”
The chubby interloper smiled, “Hi Keira! I hear that you two are working together on that awful mess at the Moon base.” Desiree stroked Lev’s shoulder fondly, “Are you a grad student too?”
“No, I have a real job with the Free City Fiefdom Liaison Office,” she’d replied curtly.
“Oh,” Desiree shook her head disdainfully, “that doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“Des is an amazing artist. She painted fantastic murals all over the walls at my house.”
As she laughed at his flattery, her jiggling breasts threatened to break free of the insufficient fabric that restrained them. “Hey, you two; I’ve got some really excellent katchah. Do you want some?”
“Sure,” Lev chirped, “I’ll take a bit.”
Keira had frowned disapprovingly, “None for me.”
Katchah was one of dozens of illegal and mildly hallucinogenic herbs that filtered into the counter culture of Free City from the lawless domains of the Warlords. Years ago, Keira’s own antiestablishment parents had been nabbed when they imported several kilos of the banned substance. They had paid a substantial fine for the transgression and nearly lost their coveted Importer’s License.
Keira winced; even now her parents continued to sneak the profitable contraband across the border despite her repeated admonishments.
Desiree produced a thin and elaborately decorated pouch from her bikini bottom. Her stubby fingers retrieved a sticky hunk of shredded brown leaves and she held it temptingly in front of Lev.
He eagerly snapped up the offering and kissed Desiree’s cheek in thanks. She pressed a small lump into her own mouth.
The drug seemed to cause her table partners to fixate on each other. As the evening wore on, they spoke less and less to her and more and more to each other in progressively more incomprehensible and slurred sentences.
Finally when her queasiness had subsided, Keira left them chortling gleefully at their own terrible jokes.
She’d whimpered gloomily in the nearly empty transport back to her apartment building.
Why had she been attracted to Lev in the first place?
He was self-indulgent and often maddeningly unfocused, not unlike her parents, Keira realized with a start. He seemed far more interested in immediate gratification than long-term fulfillment. Perhaps that was why he had apparently selected Desiree’s offer of quick thrills to her own possibilities of eventual stability and perhaps even love.
In the dark and quiet apartment bed, Keira pressed her eyes tightly closed; he was completely wrong for her and she should just get on with other more promising matters.
But still, she sighed heavily, there was just something special about Lev.
16. A lamentable lack of mirth Jana floated aimlessly in her dark and miserable cell.
She drew her attention back to the matter at hand, “Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound.”
This was the sixth recital of A Midsummer Night's Dream that she’d forced herself to endure since she’d been taken hostage. Three and a half decades earlier it had been her favorite work of Shakespeare, now she would have done almost anything to enjoy Much Ado About Nothing or Macbeth instead.
Where was she?
Jana chortled at the irony of the question; she was lost in the Solar System and lost in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
A midsummer night in the Solar System....
Jana stiffened in dread; she was losing her mind.
OK, keep going.
She took a deep breath, “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night.”
Jana cackled hoarsely; she remembered a naive girl in the back row of her Ancient English Lit class asking the Professor if a ‘collied night’ had something to do with sheepdogs shepherding in the evening.
Regrettably her tenuous focus was waning; she would have to come back to Shakespeare later.
She tapped her fingertips to her thumb and tallied up weeks. It was late June or perhaps early July. Far off on the hospitable blue Earth, someone was surely enjoying a genuine midsummer’s night.
Hopefully Lev had adjusted to her disappearance. She dearly missed the long distance daily chit-chat that they had shared; she describing the intricacies and intrigue of her classified research and he chronicling his gregarious social interactions and his newfound pursuit of fun.
Jana’s shoulders slumped in despair; she had lost everything and everyone with no prospect of regaining either.
He had been gifted from the beginning, she reminisced. As a two-year-old, Lev would toddle around their townhouse in Free City and methodically describe everything that he saw in startling detail, ‘Mommy, this is the parlor. The walls are white. Under the gray sofa is a yellow ball with light blue stripes and big red stars. Out of the window, I can see the transports on Breton Street.’
A keen sense of the physical world had come easily to him, social skills had not.
In those aspects they had been the same, Jana winced. She had quite willingly forgone the long and uncertain path of romance for the solitude of a predictable and secure life as a Physicist.
When the task of completing her education had been achieved, she methodically set about producing a child.
Jana had eschewed all of the ordinary complex social interactions with men and instead chose to be clinically inseminated with the genetic material of an anonymous and randomly selected academic from the University.
Brainy parents had begat a brilliant son, she wryly noted.
When he was young she had dutifully carted him off to peewee football and preteen art classes. They had both struggled mightily to interact with their peers at the sports venues and art studios; neither had much luck.
Just as she had done in Buenos Aires many years earlier, Lev excelled in school. While he spent progressively more time studying the complexities of Literature, Mathematics and especially the Sciences, she had been drawn further into her own pursuit of Ultra Energy Physics. He had earned a High School diploma with highest honors just as she had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics.
Lev had of course attended Free City University.
In his second year he’d sat through the final class that she’d taught as a Senior Professor before accepting a staff researcher’s position at the small High Energy Lab in the Physics Department basement. Not surprisingly he had easily earned the highest marks in the huge lecture hall of over three hundred students.
When he started his graduate studies, Jana was promoted to the Chief Researcher’s position at the Lunar Ultra Energy Lab.
After she’d left Earth, he’d wandered off course.
People told her that she should be dismayed by his supposed failings, but she knew better. After more than twenty years of excelling at academics he was finally delving into the much more difficult to fathom subtleties of human interactions.
Lev’s long string of girlfriends and casual lovers had much more to do with systematically comparing different female personas than promiscuity.
Eventually he would settle on one that he liked, she chuckled.
Jana wriggled around and floated to the porthole. The view was exactly the same as it had been for days: hundreds of gray asteroids slowly tumbled together through cold dark space.
Wait!
She pressed her cheek against the frigid window and strained to resolve the tiny anomaly.
There was color!
A minuscule red speck flashed on and off at the extreme limit of what Jana could see through the porthole. It was a ship of some kind, she finally decided.
For hours Jana studied the approaching vessel until the strain in her neck and the immense craft’s slow trajectory past the Butin Belle made further viewing impossible.
• • •
“I saw something!” she blurted out to Bos
co as he dragged her backwards through the dim passageway.
“Yes you did, you old hag.” He tugged her past a thick bulkhead door.
Her hands were tightly bound behind her back but Jana managed to twist around to see him. At this point, even the crude and volatile thug was preferable to the slow numbing madness of prolonged solitude. “Can I call you Bosco?”
“Boz,” a twitchy half smile darted across his scruffy face.
“It was a ship, wasn’t it Boz.”
He stopped at a closed hatchway and spun her around to face him, “It’s the Lightning.”
Jana watched him slide his fingertips over the door’s security interface. If she ever escaped from her cell, this was as far as she’d get without being detected.
“It was supposed to be here weeks ago,” Bosco yanked open the door, “but the lugheads that hijacked it couldn’t figure out how to board a robotic ship.” He rolled his eyes contemptuously, “Shipjacks, my ass!”
Jana’s senses were slowly returning, “Why are we and the Lightning out here in the middle of nowhere, Boz?”
He stared unnervingly at her for several seconds, “You talk too much.”
Jana forced a smile; if she was ever going to manipulate the pirates they would have to view her as benign and friendly. “Sorry, I’m just really happy to chat with someone.”
“We’re gonna get you back together with your friends later today,” Boz pulled her gruffly into the control room, “you can talk all you want with them.”
“Ah, Doctor Fesai,” Captain Gristle said, “it’s good to see you again.”
Bosco secured her binding straps to the side of a stout control panel before propelling himself out of the pilothouse.
As Jana watched the Captain tend to the controls, she resolved to trick him into revealing more information to her. “When are we docking with the Lightning?”
He looked up at her with some annoyance.
She smiled innocently at the man.
“In about an hour if everything goes right,” the Captain studied a small display, “then we’ll move you and the others on to the Xenon Lightning and put you to work.”
