by Trevor Wyatt
He puts his hand on my shoulder, then lets go and starts walking away. I figure that means the recruitment speech is over.
"Asel, you take point, we'll retrace our steps, figure out where we can hit these assholes next."
"We'll need to find something to replace the corvette, and we're running out of ground explosives," says Sheila walking next to Tolhe.
I am forgotten.
In the land of the dead, the living man is...
Nothing.
I jog to catch up. Tolhe hears me and turns around; he looks smug. Sheila looks annoyed. Asel looks at me, then goes back to walking, nonplussed.
“Would flares designed for ground dispersal work?"
Tolhe looks thoughtful. "Very likely," he says.
"Then follow me," I say heading off toward the shed on the other side of the property, hoping that the vault where the flares are kept pressure-sealed has withstood the violence.
I know the code because Nadia uses the same key code for everything. I tap the code in solemnly, grateful when the door swings up revealing bundles of flares, primed and ready.
"Well," says Tolhe grinning wide at the selection, "It looks like Christmas came early this year."
Shelia pushes past me grabbing bundles to load into satchels, "Let's get to work."
I think of all the damage we can do with these flares if we can get close enough to the Sonali ships.
"Yes," I say hefting a bundle of flares in my hand, "Let's."
Life. It’s interesting what you’ll remember when it’s all gone.
But I’m not gone yet.
Jeremy Black and the Asteroid Belt of Azoc
I walk into the dank bar with a scrunched up piece of paper in my right fist and hope ablaze in my heart.
The bar had style even though it is situated in one of the most dangerous, underground worlds in the farthest reaches of the Terran Union. You just had to agree that whoever was the manager of this bar had taste. Yes, the bar was jammed to the brim with the scums of the galaxy: bounty hunters, space pirates, kidnappers, terrorists, the wanted, criminals—all drinking, dancing, causing a brouhaha, sometimes fighting with guns, knives, and fists, under the same roof, yet, the architecture of the place resembled what you’d find in an upscale environment in some of the finer worlds within the Terran Union.
I am still standing at the mouth of the door to allow my eyes adjust to the low lighting. Even though it’s midnight outside, there’s still some modicum of light from the hovering street lights. The bar’s lighting is a stark difference. There are lights inside, but they are dim. Except on the dance floor, where the lights fluctuate and dance around like a disco.
The light serves two purposes. One, for people to see where their food or drinks will go into, when taking a swig. And two, to ensure their knives make it home, when trying to assassinate someone. The music is deafeningly loud—and, of course, this is for two reasons: one, so everyone would dance regardless of how good the song really is, and two, so that no one would hear it when you were screaming for help or screaming before death.
I scoff a little. This is no place for the weak or narrow minded. This bar is a place where some of the most nefarious deals are brokered. This is where you can hire practically any mercenary for practically any endeavor, from bombing an entire world to petty thieving. Assassins come here on their off time. Bounty hunters come here to unwind. Space pirates—including the ones working both sides of the blasted Sonali-Terran war—come here to tell their stories and brag to everybody.
To be sure, Yulverse is a Terran Union world. However, being one of the farthest flung colonies in the Union, it was all but abandoned by the Union. It’s not one of the Outers because it still flies the Union’s flag. Nevertheless, its government had long since been ruined by corruption and filthy lucre.
Yulverse has all the makings of a well governed world, what with its police force, presidency, senate, and representative on the Terran Council, as well as all its agencies to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the 50,000 residents.
But that is all for show. It is all on the surface. Yulverse’s government is as criminal as the inhabitants that come here to hide. And among all the bars, this particular bar is renowned in the underground world of Terran Union as the most dangerous of them all. In fact, it is so dangerous that newcomers rarely make it out alive. So dangerous that its pavements are coated in the bloods of its customers every day. Yet, they keep coming.
I really don’t want to be here. I may be sharp, skilled, smart, and goddamn dashingly handsome, still, this bar—the Starlight Bar—is the last place I want to be. I’m also wise and not foolish. All it takes is a wide-eyed space pirate to spot me and slide a concealed knife into my spleen, and I’d be gone before the next verse of the song blares through the hidden bass speakers.
If it weren’t for who I hoped and had a burning desire to meet here, I would not even fly within ten light years of this forsaken world. Well…that and if I am out of a job. In Yulverse, there is always a gig for the most despicable, dishonorable, disdainful, and dangerous of criminals. On that list, space pirates by default come in the top three.
I allow myself to smile. Yes, sure, the average Armada official considers me a space pirate. I like to see myself as a businessman and a war profiteer. I’m no more a space pirate than the corporations that make oodles from the war efforts. Heck, all the corporations have outposts right here in Yulverse. You may say that this is after all a recognized Terran Union world, and you would be right. But remember, nothing goes on here except criminal activities or the planning of criminal activities.
Yulverse has no natural resources, nothing to offer the Union in terms of resources, so why would those profit oriented corporations spend millions to maintain an outpost in Yulverse, if they weren’t engaged in some criminal activity themselves?
At the end of the day, it’s all business. Just that the Armada Intelligence is biased. Fucking biased to my detriment.
“Are you gonna keep standing there, or do you want to go buy a drink?” says a gruff voice behind me.
I crane my neck to see the boxy bouncer’s head through the slightly open door. He’s looking at me with a deadly glare as though telling me: Give me a reason and make my day.
I flinch a little at that thought. I flash the bouncer a little smile and walk away from the door.
Yeah, this goddamn world is the last place I want to be. Still, I find myself walking towards the bar, senses heightened in preparation for an attack on my person I am more than ninety percent sure will come. I have taken the pain to dress like a low level space pirate, with weathered boots, faded pants, and a shirt that has seen better days. I have one of the oldest and cheapest weapons in the galaxy in my right holster: a 9mm Berretta. At least, the big killers would see me as small fish and ignore me.
The bar is spherical in design. It has a central, circular bar with pumps hanging from an overhead beer brewer. There are five bartenders at the bar, while the number of customers trying to get a beer numbered above fifty. The outer edge of the sphere is lined with table and chairs. This area is dark and the light that reaches there is minimal. I can make out the figures there, barely, but I can identify faces and I am having difficulty counting just how many are there. The space between the bar and the chairs is the dance floor, and it is littered with male and female dancers.
I make my way to the north portion of the bar. The queue here is lighter because the bartender on this side is a bit faster than the others. The letter I got told me to meet at the north portion of the bar in Yulverse’s Starlight.
As I get to the northern side, one of the customers sitting at the bar leaves. I immediately slip in ahead of a short, stout individual.
“Sorry, dude,” I say with one of my more annoying smiles.
Others simply shrug and wait for their turns to get a beer, but the man’s face contorts terribly into a frown. I tense even before I notice the glint of a knife sliding out of its scabbard. My r
eaction is immediate. I go for his jugular, the edge of my palm flat as a knife. The dude lets out a cry that’s drowned by the music.
He staggers backwards, the teeming beer mongers parting and closing ranks at the same time as he goes. He collapses on the dance floor, his knife clattering out of his reach. He remains there, dazed.
“I said sorry,” I mutter, actually feeling sorry for him and looking away. Some moments later, I received my mug of cool ale and began to nurse it, waiting for who I desperately hope will be Commander No One.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so obsessed with her, even after three months after the mission to blow up that Sonali Starship, I might have disregarded the message we’d received on one of our contraband runs to the Outers. But you see, I am not myself. She is in my dreams. She fills my thoughts. She basically commands my emotions and reasoning. I have made so many dangerous runs to New Washington and even once snuck into the Armada Intelligence Command there, hoping to bump into her and maybe ask her out. My crew thinks I’m crazy and even had a doctor take a look at me. But the doctor gave me a clean bill of health.
I am truly losing my mind, wondering and hoping that I have made enough of an impression that Commander No One, wherever she was, is thinking of me too. I was hoping she would make contact with us again, and I swore that the next time she did, I was going to make my move. I wouldn’t let her go so easily. If she rejects me, I can get some closure and maybe move on. Otherwise…
So, when we got a message from one ‘N1’, my buzzers went off. Of course, everyone gave me reasons to believe that N1 could mean a lot of things aside from No One, but I wasn’t hearing that. It was a biscuit crumb…a trail, and I’d be damned if I didn’t follow. I’d rather follow it and be led to a dead end than not follow it and spend the rest of my life cursing myself for not taking my chances.
“This could be Sonali spies, looking for avenge the ship you destroyed!” Garret, one of my crew and one of my two best friends had said, even as I walked out of the Corvette, which landed several miles outside the city.
I didn’t even reply. I got into the Corvette’s only air car and drove on.
My comm device chirps. I tap it and say, “Go ahead.”
“What’s happening Captain?” asks Garret.
“She’s not made an appearance…yet,” I say and cut the line before Alex begins another lecture on how this could be an assassination attempt. Of course I would be worried except for the fact that no attempt has been made for the last three months since our deed. It is highly unlikely that they knew it was a space pirate that destroyed their ship.
“You waiting for someone?” says the voice beside me.
I freeze. Something about the voice doesn’t sit well with me. It was deep and masculine, but is also sounded computerized, like it was a translator. I even think I may have heard clicks and pops, but the music is so loud it may have been that.
I throw a quick glance at the figure beside me and see that he’s wearing an ash colored hood that conceals him from top to bottom.
I grunt a ‘yes’ and try to ignore him.
“I’m Mark,” he says, sticking his hand out. “Mark Angel.”
I growl. I take his hand and say, “Jeremy. Jeremy Black.”
The next thing he says causes my blood to run cold.
“Nice to have finally caught you, Jeremy Black of The White Silk,” the voice says and then I hear it: the click and pops.
I try to pull out my hand, but the creature’s grip is rock solid. I look around, thinking to yell for help.
“It’s of no use,” he says. “You are coming with me, or you die here. Your choice.”
My mind begins to spin. I count about five more hooded Sonali in the room. Yes, I figured they are Sonali. Damn. How could I have been so stupid, thinking this was No One.
At that there is a loud explosion that rocks the bar. The concussion wave blasts me and the Sonali holding me apart. We land side by side along with about a hundred other people.
The music somehow survives the blast, but the screams threaten to swallow its blare. Klaxons ring out too, and the disco light turn red in warning.
At the door I see a feminine figure silhouetted by the bright hovering streetlights outside. It’s as curvaceous and lithe as I remember, standing alluringly in the blast hole of the wall of the bar, a high grade Armada laser gun sitting in a holster on her right jutting hips.
The last thing I remember before I black out is that the Sonali stands up and tries to stab me in the face before his slits extend and he crumples beside me, dead. Commander No One stands over the dead Sonali and smiling sweetly at me.
I wake up with my back on a sandy ground and my face to a star littered sky. I shoot up to my feet, going for my weapon. Surprisingly it’s still there. I pull it out and aim it at the nearest person to me.
No One stares at me, unfazed. She’s sitting on a makeshift chair by a camp fire. There are provisions on the ground. Behind her is an aircar parked on the ground, and farther behind is my Corvette.
I focus on No One. She’s wearing her long brunette hair down, and it flows all the way to her cleavage, which is visible to my eyes and appeal to every single molecule of my being. Her stunningly beautiful face looks at me, expressionless, her lips thin, yet luscious, and pressed into a line. Her long neck sings a song of pleasure to me, even as the smooth easterly wind wraps around it. She’s wearing the standard tight fitted Armada jumpsuit which brings out all her curves…which is kinda painful because all I can do is stare.
I holster my weapon.
“That was kinda stupid, getting caught by a Sonali,” she says, her voice cold and flat.
Anger bursts in my veins. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! You were the one that said we should meet in that god forsaken bar. I could have died!”
She nods. “And you would have, if I hadn’t rescued you.” No iota of compassion in her eyes or voice. Heck, I can feel another mission coming.
I look away. It’s becoming painfully clear that I’m only here because she needs me to go on another mission, forget that the entire Sonali Intelligence is on the hunt for Jeremy Black of The White Silk.
A terrible barrage of hurt and pity besieges my heart.
My mom always told me I would get into trouble because of a girl. I instinctively look up. Mom, looks like you were right.
“Hey…” No One says, calling back my attention.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” No One says, sounding as though she really means it. For a moment, I see more than a spy. I see a loving, caring human that really means what she’s saying. But it lasts only a moment, before she looks away and her spy façade falls into place.
One moment is all I need. Before this is all over, I will make my move. There may be a chance for us, I think.
Who would have thought that a low life space pirate like me could ever have a chance with a high ranking Armada Intelligence agent like her?
Of course, I know she might be playing me. Seduction is one of the hallmarks of Intelligence Agents. Still, I do like the attention. I’m willing to explore it for as long as it lasts.
She clears her throat and says, “We need you for another mission.”
I nod.
“There’s an asteroid belt near the border with Sonali space, near the Mariner nebula.” she says.
“Yeah,” I reply. Every smuggler knows it. “The Asteroid Belt of Azoc. It’s abandoned. It’s nothing but rocks. No minerals.”
No One nods, her hair splashing around her neck and chest in inciting waves. I try not to gawk at her—an extremely onerous endeavor.
“Well, Jeremy, that Asteroid Belt isn’t abandoned,” No One says. “The largest asteroid is the site for a top secret communications installation that we believe is vital for the Sonali war efforts. Destroying it will cripple their communications for as much as one year. We need you to sneak in and destroy the installation.”
“You command a fucking cruiser,” I say in reply, “why don’t y
ou just cruise in and blast the shit out of that thing? It’s going to be easier and safer, rather than risking sending an agent into an installation that’s probably guarded.”
“Because that installation has one of the most powerful shields known to us,” she replies. “If we begin bombarding the asteroid, it’s going to take us hours to bring down the shield. Also, remember, we aren’t that far from the border. Sonali reinforcements could be there in less than an hour. We need to destroy the installation covertly.”
“Okay,” I say, “but why me? Why not you? Don’t you have people who are specifically trained for this?”
She smiles again.
“You’re the only person I trust enough to pull it off,” she says. “You see, you have a special skill set.”
“Oh…I can sneak into places and sneak out without being caught?” I say, a bit hurt that she saw me only as a pirate.
She shrugs. “You said it not me.”
This is when I realize that another aircar is approaching. No One doesn’t seem alarmed so I relax. The aircar lands beside mine and another agent exits the aircar, carrying a box the size of a suit case. He drops it at No One’s side and returns back to the aircar without saying a word or looking at me.
“Let me guess,” I say, “that’s the bomb?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “Put it anywhere within the installation, preferably near the generators or computer equipment and set the timer with enough time for you to get out. Once it’s started, it cannot be stopped. Plus, the bomb has a great blast radius. Make sure you’re off the asteroid by the time the bomb goes off.”
I look at the suitcase. There’s a small LCD display on its head and a conspicuous power button.
“How would you know the mission is a success?” I ask.
“I’ll be here when you return, Jeremy,” she says in a soft voice.
The hairs on my nape shoot up. I swallow hard not sure what I caught in her voice.
“Do this, and you’ll finally get what you want,” she says.
