by Mark Wandrey
“So maybe we should blow up a few buildings to bring the price down?” Jim growled. The crustaceans looked alarmed, if a crab with extra arms could look alarmed.
“We apologize,” they said through the translators several times.
“Apologies are nice, but how do you plan to settle the debt?” Hargrave persisted. “We will turn this over to the mercenary guild, if we must. They may even allow us to keep this facility.” Jim lifted an eyebrow at Hargrave but the other man gave him a wink. What the hell would they do with a petrochemical processing facility anyway?
“We can offer you some Raknar!”
“Some what?” Hargrave asked. A short time later they were being shown to the administrative complex of the operation. It was a common Union design tower a few dozen stories tall, only in front of it were a pair of huge, vaguely humanoid robots. “I’ve seen those before,” Hargrave said, “some kind of ancient mecha.”
“Yes,” the Otoo said, “Raknar! Valuable and rare.”
“Not that rare,” he told Jim sotto voce. “I’ve seen them on a dozen worlds, usually in pieces and in worse shape.
“They’re awesome!” Jim said, looking at the machines that were easily a hundred feet tall. “Do they work?”
“No,” the Otoo admitted. “Well, they can be made to walk. They are very ancient, used in the war against the Kahraman a long time ago.”
Splunk was riding on Jim’s shoulder and, for a change, had nothing to say. She merely observed the Raknar with quiet intensity.
“We offer these two Raknar to you in lieu of payment.”
“No way,” Hargrave said. “They’re lawn decorations.”
“They’d look pretty cool in front of the headquarters on Earth,” Jim admitted. Hargrave looked chagrined. “These two Raknar and twenty million.” The Otoo clacked claws in consternation and made a counter offer. An hour later negotiations were completed.
“There is no way those two hunks of junk were worth three million apiece,” Hargrave said, shaking his head.
“I haven’t taken a dime in four contracts,” Jim said. “If they’re worthless, then I’ll take them for my share.”
“Jim, that’s crazy. It’s your company. You get some of the profits and spend them however you want.”
“Then stop complaining,” Jim said as the heavy transport began to lift the first one onto a truck bed. He was grinning ear to ear. Who else on Earth had their very own giant robots? “I wonder if I can get three more and combine them together?” Hargrave just shook his head and put his face in his palm.
* * * * *
Chapter 28
Business was good – almost too good. Jim hadn’t yet returned to Earth as there were simply too many contracts available and all at increasing payouts. Something was up, and no one seemed to know what. Traveler was docked at the orbital station of Karma where he’d rented facilities that the Cavaliers could use as their off-Earth base. Many of the contracts coming up were in this region, so it was just an expedient. Traveler consumed too much F11 to have it flitting back and forth to Earth between contracts. Instead, he sent personnel and equipment via commercial transport at a fraction of the cost.
Jim signed the Cavalier’s first contract in which he would not personally join in the deployment. He sent a single platoon on a scout mission to assist the Spinward Rangers all the way over on the far side of the Praf region, coreward in the Jesc Arm. They were due back in a couple of months. He’d tapped Buddha for that op and sent him and his team along with the Golden Horde because they were heading the same way. The Horsemen often hitched rides for free – a perk of being in the club.
Minus the one platoon, he had his entire strength on hand and was faced with a hard choice of contracts at the moment. Many of them were tough, direct-heavy, or medium-assault ops. His entire outfit was composed of veterans now, even himself, though he admitted, in his own case for his own sake, a bit less so. At least he had a HALD drop under his belt. And four mostly trashed suits in the depot. He’d spent a lot of time with Adayn as she led her team keeping the older suits up and running. It was also an opportunity to let Splunk mess around in the shop, though always under close supervision.
One day, shortly after they’d moved onto the big spinning station, Splunk went missing. Jim found her hours later in an equipment room of another merc company. She’d been in the process of building a CASPer from spare parts, and was well underway. Luckily Adayn knew their armorer and she made up some cock-and-bull story to distract and appease him while Jim snuck her out inside his uniform jacket. Splunk had fought and complained the whole time. Adayn had nicknamed her Watchmaker. It took Jim a full hour of research to find that reference. When he did, he was glad it wasn’t entirely accurate. Jim had Splunk and Adayn spend at least an hour a day working together. Adayn had been helping Jim plumb the depths of Splunk’s abilities, and they seemed formidable. Especially if you consider that her race lived in underground caves and had no obvious tech.
A chime from his office door made him look up. The camera was on and showed Hargrave outside.
“Come in,” he said, and the door slid aside. “What’s up?”
“Wondering if you’ve gone over that list of contracts Peepo sent up?”
“Yeah,” Jim said and held up the slate showing them. “Looks like a large collection of shit sandwiches.”
“And most without mayo,” Hargrave agreed and came across the office. It had been a little disconcerting at first watching people walk in the station. The personnel offices and barracks were all outside the outermost wall of Ring A on the station, their feet facing out toward space. Composed of four large, concentric rings spinning in orbit, each ring had a higher gravity. Ring A, furthest out, had the highest gravity (nearly one G nominal). Ring D, just off the hub, only one-tenth of a gravity. It held mostly workshops and warehouses. The hub was docking bays, all in microgravity. Traveler was docked there along with a dozen or more other ships at various times. It was a huge station; the circumference was more than a mile. Even so, when people walked around you could tell the floor was curved.
“I’m leaning toward these three,” Jim said and handed him the slate. Hargrave took it and grunted.
“Yep, good choices. Same ones I’d earmarked myself.” Jim smiled, glad his instincts were good.
The first was a medium-assault – a vendetta mission between two neighboring star systems. Ironically, the combatants were of the same race. Jim figured it was some kind of religious dispute. Didn’t really matter, their potential employers wanted their adversary’s ability to strike at them neutralized before the other guys could start it. Smash and run. It was the easiest of the three, but provided the least profit, and the highest possibility of civilian casualties. However, there was little possibility of major opposition.
The second mission was to provide one of four elements in a heavy assault. It was a hot conflict that had been going on between two merchant consortiums over a series of deep bore mines on a barren world in the middle of nowhere. The mines were of questionable output, but that wasn’t deterring the fighting in the least. It had the highest payout, and the highest risk. The enemy of the contractor had a history of hiring Tortantula merc units, and they weren’t pushovers.
The last was the wildcard. The Wathayat trading consortium wanted a garrison unit rated for medium-to-heavy assault on a remote gas processing facility. And that spoke of F11. Fighting over the rare gas was common and often contentious. Wathayat had a reputation of shrewd deals for rare elements, and rumor was they’d recently added a new race to their number that brought, you guessed it, F11 to the table. Its payout was a little above average, and would take all their available forces. The employer had already tried to hire The Golden Horde, the member of the Four Horsemen that specialized in defensive work, but that company was unavailable.
“So, which is it going to be?” Hargrave asked. Jim scratched his chin and thought. Splunk was over on a bookshelf taking apart an antique alien-manufactured
timepiece Jim had purchased the other day. He rolled his eyes and chuckled. He also made up his mind.
Ashattoo watched from his office as the tanker settled into the docking cradle. Being put in charge of the F11 operation had been a great honor he wasn’t sure he really wanted. From mining chief to F11 production manager was further than he ever thought he’d go, especially when his brood mates had first proposed the operation. But ever since the Athal joined with the Wathayat, the operation was hounded by disaster. Epic disaster, and death.
Three processing and storage facilities had been destroyed, one after another, and each not long after the decision to use that facility was made and assets began to move. It was out of desperation that the operation was finally moved to the world of Chimsa. It wasn’t a far-flung and remote processing operation of the Wathayat. Chimsa was a heavily-populated planet of the elSha. A technology center that supplied goods all over the Union. Attacking Chimsa would be an act of borderline insanity. Ashattoo was counting on that defense, but he was also savvy enough to know he needed more than that. He needed insurance.
Hours before the tanker arrived, he’d gotten confirmation from the mercenary guild. Cartwright’s Cavaliers had accepted the contract and were on their way. One of the human’s legendary Four Horsemen, the Cavaliers were a merc company of unbelievable prowess. They were feared and respected throughout the Union.
“Come attack us here,” Ashattoo said, looking up at space and rubbing his wings together. “None can stand against these human powerhouses!”
Galrath put the slate down and considered the news carefully. The moves over the last year had been carefully orchestrated to get the bothersome Wathayat to do just what they’d done. They were going to concentrate all their F11 processing and storage at one location they considered unassailable. Who would attack a world like Chimsa? A world so populous, so valuable as to be well-defended.
Galrath licked his lips unconsciously at the thought of the fight to come. The previous tests of Project K had all been successful, if a bit disappointing on some levels. Still...successful enough to take it to the next level. In a few months, there would be millions of liters of F11, all processed and ready for the taking. It would be both a master stroke of opportunism and a statement that the Acquirers were now the preeminent force in the galaxy. As an added bonus, the guilds would soon be on their way out.
He tapped a claw on the slate and brought up a map of all the galaxy’s F11 production facilities. To date there were thirty-nine of them. Far too many and far too spread out to easily deploy his new force. He sorted them by size. Five of them accounted for almost seventy-five percent of all the galaxy’s production of F11, and Chimsa was ten percent of that, the smallest of the five. He plotted the other four on his slate and his lips pulled back in an unconscious snarl. Maybe he was being too conservative? If the Chimsa operation was successful, and he knew it would be, the next move was obvious. If the entire galaxy had to come to the Acquirers for F11, they would control the galaxy. The inefficient and ineffectual Union could finally be done away with.
Still, he was getting ahead of himself. Victory was not assured. On the slate was still the latest news from his contacts at the Mercenary Guild. Cartwright’s Cavaliers had accepted a contract on Chimsa, as an assault company. The Wathayat knew the game after all, or at least some of it. So be it. Galrath typed an order. He’d studied the entropy-cursed humans and knew some of their history. Even the Four Horsemen had their Achilles heels, only it had a lot more than two sets of heels. He licked his lips and wondered if he’d just made a joke.
* * * * *
Chapter 29
The last thing Jim wanted to be doing in the hours before Traveler would depart with most of the Cavaliers aboard was to be searching Karma station for his mischievous friend. Hargrave said the little bugger was better at disappearing than your last credit.
Most of the long-term residents of the station knew the Fae by sight; she was a common feature of his own comings and goings, but she was just as likely to turn up with Adayn or by herself in a late-night prowl. The lights of the station were somewhat subdued by human standards, which made them almost ideal for her. Still, she’d taken to wearing a simple belt around her middle in which she kept a few possessions, a couple of simple tools, and a pair of tinted goggles she’d fashioned herself. Neither Jim nor Adayn had made the belt for her – further proof of her abilities.
Any new or different piece of technology drew her like a moth to a flame. Jim had won more than a few bets in the station’s bars when he was presented with an obscure piece of alien technology that no one else could figure out. Splunk always made sense of it eventually, the only question was how long. The records so far were five seconds for a strange solar-powered light a trader had given her, and two hours for a life-signs detector that may well have been made by the Kahraman. Jim had won one hundred credits on the life signs detector, then lost 500 when Splunk refused to give it back and ran away with it. Jim never found the device, nor any number of other random pieces of equipment. He suspected she had a stash somewhere on the station. He only hoped she wasn’t building some kind of death ray, or something worse.
Adayn kept in touch with him as they searched separately, the station was far too big for one person. It wasn’t like they could actually search all possible locations, just that they doubled their chances of coming across someone who’d seen his companion.
“Just finished my tour of the shops in the hub,” she said over the radio linked with his pinplants, “moving out to ring D.”
“Thanks again,” he said.
“Anything for you,” she replied. Jim blinked and blushed in the dim lighting. They spent a lot of time together, and he liked that. She didn’t see the awkward fat kid who’d inherited a storied merc company, she just saw him. Sure, Splunk had a lot to do with it, but that didn’t enter his mind.
They continued searching, he from A ring down toward her. Like several times before, they met up in C Ring without any luck.
“I wish I knew where Splunk’s secret hiding place was,” Jim said when Adayn hopped up. C Ring was only at one-quarter gravity. It was a little like walking on Mars. “And what she’s up to.”
“Maybe she found something interesting in Trader’s Alley and is engrossed it in?” Found, Jim thought, funny. When it came to finders-keepers, Splunk was essentially amoral. She never hurt anyone and demonstrated compassion for the sick and injured, but to her, possession was nine-tenths of the law. Should they ever be offered it, her race would be fine candidates for the Union. But, her habits were a little worrisome and often expensive.
“Possibly,” he agreed and checked his watch. It was twelve hours before Traveler was scheduled to leave, and the last transport from Earth was arriving only a few hours before that. Cross-loading would be a major logistical challenge. The ship would contain troopers, techs, armament, and some backup suits. “I need to finish a couple of reports and get some downtime. Can you keep an eye out?”
“Sure,” she said and touched his arm. It made him shiver. “You get some rest, she’ll turn up.” He nodded his thanks and left so he didn’t have to stammer when he spoke. Besides, the uniform made erections too visible, even the way he was built.
Jim caught a lift back to A Ring and Cartwright’s compartments. He spent two hours in his office signing off on orders, paying bills, and making sure everything looked right. Thanks to the pinplants, that went a lot faster than someone who would have had to read everything! When finally done, he went through the adjoining door and into his personal quarters. It was ten feet by ten feet with its own fresher, quite a luxury on a space station. He was the only one in the company with a private bathroom, but Hargrave had insisted, so Jim relented. Able to get a quick shower, he once again was glad he’d done so. With six hours until the transport arrived, Jim set his implants to wake him in five hours and crawled into bed. As he drifted off he was thinking of how nice it felt for Adayn to touch him.
So
mething made Jim stir from his slumber. He rolled over and tried to concentrate. Was someone in the room with him?
“Splunk?” he asked dreamily.
“No,” a feminine voice answered, “it’s me.” In dim ambient light, he saw the lithe form of Adayn by the door to his tiny quarters.
“Wha?” he said, still not quite awake. He could see the lines of her face, a slight smile as she moved toward him. Her uniform fell away and he looked at her body. Thin waist, graceful hips, tiny breasts. “Adayn, why?”
“Shhhh,” she hissed and slid under the sheets with him. It was a small bed made all the smaller by his size, yet somehow she fit with him. He was so hard it hurt. She found him with a hand and felt his hardness. “Isn’t this what you want?” she purred in his ear.
“Y-yes,” he answered, shivering with anticipation, “more than anything!”
“But you’ve never done it, and you’re afraid?” He nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” And she was on top of him, straddling his bulk with her small frame, lean legs on either side. She took him in her hand and rubbed him against her wetness. He shuddered in fearful anticipation as she began to push down onto him, and he exploded.
Jim sat up, the buzz of his pinplant alarm jarring him awake like a lightning bolt through his brain. He felt like he’d been ripped from one world into another, rudely and without warning. He felt a hand and looked to the side. Splunk was sitting there looking at him, her huge eyes staring, long delicate ears almost straight up like antenna, head cocked, and just pulling her hand back. That hand had been touching one of the external points of his pinplants.
