A Mercenary in Escrow: A Deek Boomer Story

by Erik Wecks

  The Con

  Deek caressed the rounded flanks of the Li Zhènfan. He couldn’t believe it had been three years since he had seen her.

  He was uneasy. The greeting he had imagined over and over while waiting for release had been somewhat more enthusiastic, but he was determined not to let the one he’d received wreck his mood. Once they were underway, there would be time to suss out the trouble and fix it. He even tried to whistle as the others climbed in ahead of him.

  As soon as his foot hit the bottom rung of the ladder, he said, “Captain Mouse, I relieve you…” His voice trailed off as his head popped up into the galley.

  Mouse and Wonk stood in front of him. She had her sidearm pointed at his head. Before Deek had any time to react, Pig grabbed him under the armpits from behind and lifted him into the ship. Wonk stepped forward and started to frisk him.

  Deek’s mouth opened in surprise. “What’s this about?”

  Mouse answered, “Change of plans, Deek.”

  Deek gaped for a second, blinking while the words sank in. “Change of plans! Change of plans! This is kidnapping, that’s what this is!”

  Deek’s eyes bulged as Wonk got really friendly with his frisking.

  Wonk answered, “Technically, it’s bounty hunting, Captain. Your little stint in the clink may have delayed your day of reckoning with Tsunomo, but you still broke a contract. There’s a pretty big bounty on your head. Our fear was that someone inside was going to hear about it and kill you before you got out and then make a claim.”

  “What? You can’t be serious. Pig, put me down.” Deek tried to shake himself loose from the man who had once been his hired muscle.

  “Sorry, Boss, but Captain Mouse is in charge now.”

  Deek tried to spin his head to look at Pig. “Even you? Et tu, brute?”

  He looked back at Mouse, who stood there aiming her weapon at him with a silly grin on her face. “What about my plan, Mouse? What about my plan to get all of us out from under the black mark and make sure that Tsunomo didn’t kill us?”

  “Deek, your plan had more holes than a farmed quail-tard after a fat man’s hunt. There was no way in hell that was going to work.”

  “It was a good plan, Mouse.”

  Wonk stood. “He’s clean, Mo.”

  “No, Deek, your good plan landed us on a park planet with a mission to capture a colony of sentient beings. That’s where your plans got us. The three of us were lucky we managed to negotiate our way out of a black mark. The Li Zhènfan has been working with a provisional license for the last three years. Do you know how hard it is to keep this thing flying when we spend our days on milk runs for the localcorps?”

  Deek cocked his head, not sure that he had heard correctly. “Did I hear you say ‘negotiate’?”

  Mouse laughed. “Yes, Deek. We negotiated with Tsunomo.”

  Deek scowled. They were going to sell him out to the escrow company in order to clear the ship. He began to thrash in Pig’s enormous arms. “You traitors! You’re going to sell me out. How can you do this to your captain?”

  Since he couldn’t very well appeal to Pig while Pig held him in a death grip that got tighter by the second, he instead looked at Wonk. “After all we’ve been through, Wonk, this is the thanks I get?”

  Wonk shrugged. “It’s the only way to clear the ship, Captain. We did what we had to. As soon as we turn you over to escrow, we’re in the clear. It’s in our contract.” Wonk nodded his head toward the hatch at the end of the galley.

  “But it’s my ship!”

  Pig lifted him off the ground with little effort.

  Deek began to kick wildly, trying to break Pig’s anaconda grip. “Pig, don’t let them do this. I’ll get you a raise, Pig. I’ll make you my second. Pig, stop. Pig, don’t do this!”

  Deek was dumped unceremoniously into his cabin. The door locked behind him with an ominous click.

  Escrow

  By the time they arrived a week later at the deep-space station owned by Secure Escrow and Title Company, Deek had worked himself into a fit worthy of a three-year-old. When Pig and Wonk appeared at his door, he rushed them, screaming “Judas Iscariots! Benedict Arnolds!” He smacked headlong into Pig, who blocked the door with his enormous bulk. Pig didn’t even budge. Instead, he looked down at his former captain with a rather puzzled expression on his face, then picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.

  Before they left the vessel, Deek was handcuffed. Wonk, at least, seemed apologetic about the indignity, explaining that it was escrow policy. Mouse just stood there pointing her side arm at him, mouth turned up, free hand wrapped across her belly.

  Deek found clearing security on the station a real treat. The stuff they put his crew through was difficult enough, but the measures they put him through as a bond breaker were horrifying. He was scanned and washed repeatedly by robots who manhandled him. Then they checked every orifice for contraband. By the time he was done, he was convinced he had never been cleaner. He was now dressed in a white jumpsuit labeled in red letters: Property of Secure Escrow.

  Once again handcuffed, he stepped into a pale white conference room with two formidable android guards in his wake. His team sat there with the escrow officer. A human-shaped android topped with a television monitor stood in for the Tsunomo Corporation.

  The escrow officer spoke first, barely lifting his head as he eyed Deek. His voice was low and oily. “The bond breaker will speak only when spoken to. This hearing today will not determine whether you have or have not broken the contract. That will take place at another time. We are here to execute the bounty that was placed on your real person by the Tsunomo Corporation. Are we clear?”

  It took Deek a few seconds to figure out what he meant. When he had it sorted, he decided it was best not to test the security bots and answered with a simple, “Yes.”

  “Good. We should have this over in a few minutes, and then we will show you to your quarters.”

  He turned to the android at the end of the table. “Please bring in the lienholder.”

  Mr. Handa himself appeared on the screen.

  Deek started to speak. “Mr. Handa, if you will allow me the opportunity to explain…”

  The escrow officer turned his cold eyes on him and frowned.

  Deek stopped talking, mumbling, “Right, another time then.”

  Mr. Handa pretended not to have heard him.

  The escrow officer asked Deek a question. “Are you Degusto Aldophus Miller, former captain of the mercenary vessel Li Zhènfan?”

  Deek nodded. “I am.”

  The escrow officer turned to Mouse. “Are you the current captain of the Li Zhènfan, Andromeda Melicious Horner?”

  “I am.”

  Deek couldn’t help himself. For a second, he forgot that his crew had betrayed him. “Andromeda?”

  Mouse blushed to the roots of her hair, looked at the table, and muttered, “Degusto?”

  “Fair point.”

  The escrow officer rounded on Deek. “Mr. Miller, one more outburst and I will have you removed!”

  Mouse suddenly looked up from the table, eyes wide, and shook her head at him.

  Startled, Deek looked at the escrow officer and nodded.

  With the preliminaries out of the way, the contract signing went more quickly than Deek expected. Handa signed the paper contract using the android to make his mark, and Mouse signed for the Li Zhènfan. With both signatures completed, the mercenary ship Li Zhènfan was released to do business again as a registered mercenary vessel—one with a tarnished record, but that had its appeal to some clients.

  When every i was dotted and t crossed, the only thing left was the awkward goodbye. Deek wanted no part of it. He was more than furious with his former crew. They had sentenced him to a life of servitude to a corporation. He turned without looking at any of them, ready to leave.

  Mouse spoke up. “Wait, Deek.” There was something almost tender in her voice that made Deek face her.

  Without waitin
g even a millisecond, Mouse walked right up to him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Deek was so shocked that for a moment he didn’t know what to do. He kind of half inhaled, and Mouse took that as a cue to insert her tongue and swirl it around. The android guards intervened, separating them and blurting out an electronic, “Stop! Stand Back!”

  If Mouse had been a little red when he used her first name, she was now positively maroon, but she looked him in the eye. “Something to remember me by.”

  Deek sputtered, completely at a loss to explain what had just happened. Before he could get his wits about him, the security bots frog-marched him from the room.

  Voices

  It took Deek a long time to recognize that someone was speaking in his ear.

  “Hey, Deek! Wake up!”

  The problem was that it kept mixing into a dream that seemed stuck on a scene in which Mo tried to kiss him and shoot him at the same time, all the while yelling at him to wake up.

  He finally heeded her advice when he realized the actual Mo was yelling into his left ear. “Jackass, wake up!”

  Deek jerked his eyes open and sat up. His cell appeared empty.

  “What were you dreaming about, Nut-Head?”

  Deek turned around, expecting to see Mouse behind him. She wasn’t there.

  Surprised, Deek stood up from his bed and blurted, “What the hell, Mouse? Where are you?”

  “Quiet, Deek! Somebody might hear you. I’m in your head. Listen, we’re going to get you out of there. Not only was that kiss I gave you the most awkward thing I have ever done in my life, it also transferred some very important and experimental nanites into your body. That’s how I’m able to talk to you right now.”

  “You’re what?”

  “We’re getting you out.”

  “So, if you planned to spring me, then why all the subterfuge in the first place?”

  Mouse snorted. “First, you deserved every second of what’s happened to you and more. Have I mentioned that the last three years sucked, Deek?”

  Deek rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t roll your eyes. You know you earned every bit of it.”

  “Hey, do you have a camera in my head?”

  “Of course.”

  Deek frowned. “So what else have you hijacked?”

  “Nothing, really. I mean, we can tell when you’re dead. If you die, it’s probably best that we split. It wouldn’t look good if anyone found us hanging around a private escrow station smack in the middle of nowhere, but you’ve derailed me. There was a much more practical reason we had to trick you.”

  Deek couldn’t muster the effort to put any excitement in his voice. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “There are biosensors in the escrow station intake facility. You had to truly believe you were being kidnapped and betrayed by the crew, or they would never have let you in, and we would never have claimed our bounty and freed the ship. Besides, we needed somebody on board to destroy the contract so that Tsunomo can’t come after us later.”

  Deek wrinkled his brow and said, “I liked my plan better.”

  “Really, Deek? You think that it would have been better for us to try and break into two facilities simultaneously—one to steal the contract and the other to hack the Tsunomo computer system and remove our black mark? Seriously, Deek, ego aside, you have to admit this was much better than the bovine scatology you pitched when we launched off Keptyn. We’ve had three years to plan. We’ve already taken care of one half of the job. The ship is ours again and now we just need you to get the contract. It’s exactly what you would have done if the situation was reversed.”

  Deek couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was correct. Hitting both sides of his head with his palms, he changed the subject. “This is just weird.”

  “Hey! Be careful! Those things can be dislodged, and I had to transport two Arcturian princesses over twenty light-years to afford them. Gentle, please!”

  Deek shook his head carefully, trying to establish whether he was furious at his crew for conning him or in awe at the simplicity of their plan. In the end, he decided he was grateful they had come to get him, and he recognized they hadn’t needed to. “So when do I get out of this six-by-eight?”

  Mo’s tone lost much of its warmth. “Not so fast, Flyboy. The crew and I have some conditions for you.”

  Deek felt his chest tighten. “The crew and I? This isn’t a democracy, Mo. I’m the captain, and you’re my second. So tell me the plan, and let’s get on with it.”

  Now Mo truly did laugh. “No, Deek! That’s not how it is at all. You are a rightfully held prisoner of the Secure Escrow company, just waiting to be transported to the appropriate Tsunomo slave camp. On the other hand, I am the captain of the Li Zhènfan, which after three long and painful years of toting the rich and playing rent-a-cop for pissant mining companies no longer has any encumbrance on its registry. Before I risk my crew and give Secure or Tsunomo a reason to encumber my ship again, my crew and I have some nonnegotiable conditions you must be prepared to accept, Degusto Aldophus Miller. If you won’t, we’ll leave. Am I clear?”

  Deek’s mouth opened, and he breathed in, ready to vent his red-faced fury on his subordinate. Then he closed it. His forehead wrinkled, and he opened his mouth again but thought better of that as well. This wasn’t the Mo he had known three years ago, and he was torn in two between horror at the monster he had created and respect for Mo’s ability to stand up for herself.

  “Deek? Do you agree to listen to our terms?”

  Deek said the only thing he could. “Yes?”

  He still hadn’t decided whether or not he would find a way to renegotiate the terms when he got back on board the Li.

  Much of the warmth returned to Mo’s voice. “Of course you are. You don’t really have a choice, do you? Before I begin, by statute I must warn you that you are being voice printed for identification purposes, and this brainhack is being recorded and constitutes a binding contract. Degusto Miller, if you agree to the following, the crew of the ship Li Zhènfan agrees to accept you as our provisional captain for a period of six months, after which time we will review your performance, and if we are satisfied, you will be granted a full captaincy with all its privileges to last for two years, at which time the contract may be renewed at the discretion of the parties or a new arrangement found. Do you understand and agree to the period of the contract?”

  “Yes.” Deek was having a difficult time keeping up with what was being said. The whole situation was such a shock to his worldview that he kept blanking out while Mo spoke. He was worried that he had just agreed to something that he would rather not have agreed to, but then again, the only way to get out of his predicament was to keep answering yes.

  “Terms: One, you agree never to lie to any of the crew about your plans unless the truth would put them in mortal danger or represent a clear and present danger for the ship. In return, the crew agrees never to lie to you. Two, all contracts will be accepted by a vote of the crew. The vote requires a majority. Contracts that result in ties cannot be taken. And three, keeping in mind that you will have regular performance reviews, you are to keep your second fully informed of your plans whenever possible and take her advice into consideration.”

  Mo paused, and when he didn’t respond right away, she added, “That third one was mine.”

  “I kinda guessed that already, Mo.”

  Deek shrugged. He tried to keep the cynicism out of his voice. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  Mo sounded as if she was holding her breath. “Not really, if you want to get out of that cell.”

  “Then I accept.”

  Deek could hear the palpable relief in Mo’s voice. “I’m glad. I just want to be a pilot and let you do all the terrible negotiating and the administration. I had no idea that being a captain involved so much contract shuffling! Wonk’s got the plan. Let me get him on. He was making a couple of last-minute tweaks to the cloak.”

  Deek stopped her. “Hey,
Mo!”

  “Yeah, Deek?”

  Deek thought carefully about how he wanted to phrase this. “Did you like kissing me?”

  The answer was quick and too emphatic. “No!”

  Deek’s eyes narrowed. “Remember rule number one of our contract? No lying.”

  The silence on the other end of the line told him almost as much as the com channel clicking open and closed three times before Mo gave a rather strangled, “Yes.”

  Deek smiled to himself and said cheerfully, “Thanks, Mo. Now let’s get me out of this cell.”

  Breakout

  Deek heard a loud click as the deadbolt on his cell door retracted.

  He stood up. Wonk’s voice interrupted him. “Not yet, Deek! There’s some things we have to go over before you step out.”

  Deek resisted the urge to look behind him. “How did you unlock my cell, Wonk?”

  “I’ve got a friend whose day job is to work on the station’s systems. He also does a lot of hacking on the side. He’s a good guy to know. The door was only held by a regular bolt lock with a connection to security protocols in the overlord.”

  Deek smiled. “You’re in control of the overlord? Then we’re in. This will be a cakewalk. Why don’t you just lock down the station and then let me waltz right out of here?”

  “If we were in control of the overlord, that would be exactly what I would do, but we’re not. We’re in control of one of the slave computers.”

  Deek deflated like a balloon. “Oh. Which one?”

  “Food processing.”

  “What? I thought you had three years. How did you end up with food processing?”

  “Hacking Secure isn’t exactly cheap, Deek. Perhaps if I hadn’t been slaved to a ship that had a provisional license for the last three years, we could have done better, but…” He let the unfinished thought hang between them, then went on. “Theoretically, I should be able to confuse the overlord, and if I do it right, it won’t even know what’s happening. But I can only do it in short bursts, so keep up.”

  Deek’s eyes narrowed. “Theoretically?”

  “Well, it’s not like I tested it, but I got the cell open, didn’t I?”