The Sleeping Man (Tales of a Mediator Book 1)

by J. M. Preiss

  Mathias nodded to himself at that revelation. That's why Vandan was so on edge. Davison was the person that was really in charge. That would also explain why White was looking in such bad shape. He would be able to afford all of the treatments that he wanted, but Davison held all of the cards. He could probably deny all of the transport of the needed technology and drugs. White was as much a prisoner as Vandan, as the entire colony of Nephans.

  Mathias closed his eyes. He knew what he had to do.

  "Well, Mediator? Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Davison was starting to get impatient. It was obvious that he was ready to perform his act of vengeance.

  Mathias took a deep breath and slowly let it out to calm his nerves. He had been trained. He knew what to do.

  "Mr. Davison, pursuant to Federation Penal Code section 35, subsection b, you are found guilty of attempted murder of a Mediator. Section 40, subsection a, you are found guilty of reckless endangerment of innumerable lives. Section 12, subsection g, you are found guilty of illegal business practices. What do you have to say for yourself concerning sentencing?"

  "Seriously?" Davison scoffed. "You think that you're going to play the law card? Here? You Mediators are more arrogant than even the stories say!"

  "Statement noted," Mathias said coolly. "All parties wishing to be seen as non-complicit in the actions of this man, please leave the room now. All others that wish to be seen as abetting the crimes of this man, please remain seated."

  The other men around the table looked at each other. A few stood up to leave.

  "Sit down! You are in this as much as I am," Davison shouted at the men.

  They cowered back into their seat. Mathias made note of whom they were.

  "Mr. Davison, as you have been found guilty of the crimes stated previously and failed to provide ample statement concerning your sentencing, as a sanctioned Mediator of the Federation, I will now carry out the standard sentence."

  "Good luck with that," Davison scoffed.

  Mathias shook his head slightly and sighed a little. He didn't like what he was about to do, but the law was the law.

  He swiftly pushed his feet down into the floor and sent his chair tumbling backwards. Davison, caught off guard by the action, had his first shot go wide. The bolt of white-hot energy exploded the wall behind where Mathias had been sitting. Mathias had a few moments before Davison would be able to redraw his sight picture. As the chair landed on the ground, he tumbled out of it and rolled over to the right. In one fluid motion, he rose up into a crouch and drew one of his concealed weapons.

  It was a small energy pistol. By no means was it capable of taking on an individual with body armor, but Mathias didn't think that he was going to have to worry about anybody wearing any of that. With his left hand, he pressed a button just inside the right side of his collar and felt the tingling of a simple barrier coalesce around his body just beneath the material of the jumpsuit.

  The other executives had quickly shot out of their chairs and made for the doors when Davison had fired his first shot.

  "Come now, Mediator, this isn't any fun if you keep trying to live," Davison growled. "Die already!"

  A few more bolts dug into the table and chair that Mathias was using as cover. Untold wealth was being destroyed by a man with a grudge that wasn't even his own to hold.

  "I'll make this easy, Davison, turn yourself in, and the sentence will be carried out swiftly," Mathias shouted. "There is no reason to make this any worse."

  "Not going to happen, Mediator. In case you couldn't tell, I hold all of the cards. I am the House, and the House always wins."

  Another group of bolts slammed into the cover where Mathias was taking refuge. The door to his side, the door he had entered through, slid open to reveal individuals in basic body armor and riot gear. They blinked a few instances at the smoke filled room before they saw who was where.

  "Don't just stand there," Mathias shouted. "Take that man into custody."

  He heard Davison laughing.

  "Mediator, these men aren't here to help you capture me. They're here to help you into the afterlife."

  Mathias saw them raise mean looking carbines. He quickly reacted and fired his pistol at the men. The bolts mostly splashed harmlessly against the armored portions of their bodies, but a few bolts managed to find weak spots in their protection and bite into arms and legs. The injured men yelped and fell back around the doorway to get out of the way of the gunfire while the others pushed those back that had crumpled to the ground in agony.

  Davison loosed another volley of fire. The chair Mathias was hiding behind was mostly a smoldering cinder. He had to act.

  Weighing his options, Mathias dove out of the room and into the lobby. He landed amid a pile of armored bodies writhing in agony or helping those that were injured. They didn't have a chance to raise their weapons before Mathias put some more shots into knees and elbows. Before it was done, five more men were moaning on the ground, effectively out of the fight.

  Mathias didn't have much time to act, but he managed to grab one of the discarded carbines before energy bolts nipped at his feet from inside the conference room.

  "Come now, Mediator. Stop making this hard!"

  "Yeah, hard," Mathias muttered under his breath. "Why couldn't I have gotten a simple job for my first outing?"

  Rolling over to one side of the door, Mathias traded weapons in his hands. He held the pistol in his left hand at a high ready, and his right hand had the carbine tucked across his stomach.

  Peeking into the room to look for Davison, he was rewarded with a stream of plasma that nearly took off his nose. His personal shielded glowed slightly from the heat.

  Jumping across the doorway, he fired with both weapons at where he thought the fire had come from. When he landed on the other side, he rolled into a crouch and kept running for the door, the unharmed, dazed men in combat armor finally regaining their senses.

  "Stop running!" Davison was quite angry. "You're only making this harder than it has to be!"

  Mathias plowed through the door before it could open all the way. Glass showered around him as he burst out onto the street. Skidding to a stop when he made it across the median, he dove behind cover and waited.

  Davison poked his head out of the lobby; smoke was starting to billow out into the atmosphere of the dome.

  "Where'd you go to, Mediator? There's nowhere that you could hide," Davison said. "I own this town. I own this colony. You're not getting out of here alive."

  "Who said anything about leaving?" Mathias shot back as he opened fire with his pistol.

  The bolts harmlessly splashed against the wall that Davison was using for cover.

  "You'll have to do better than that," Davison shouted. "I thought the Mediators were supposed to be good at this kind of stuff."

  Mathias thought about leaving though his mental link, leaving and requesting an official inquiry into Nephans.

  "Already sent, Matty," George responded immediately. "They say that it will be here in a few days. As for leaving, you need to hurry up. I'm starting to see reports across the city of massing police forces."

  Mathias nodded to himself, fired more bolts in the direction of Davison, and made a dash for a nearby alleyway.

  As he entered the path, a bolt from Davison's gun impacted Mathias in the back and spun him around. His personal shield did its job, but that didn't mean that the heat didn't burn a little. He quickly forced the stinging in his back out of his mind and got back up. The rest of his shield glowed a dull ochre as it slowly regenerated from having to dissipate such a blast. Mathias couldn't take many more of those.

  Rounding a corner, he was presented with a group of armored men carrying carbines.

  "There he is!" one of them shouted.

  Mathias reflexively shot his own carbine at them to force them to cover as he kept running across to another alleyway. This was going to be harder than he thought.

  Using his mental link as a compass, he made
a turn at the next street to take him back towards his ship. He saw barricades being erected at the far end where the affluence met the impoverished.

  Cursing to himself, Mathias looked up at the rooftops as he ran. They were mostly at the same level, and the gaps between them weren't so great that he thought that he wouldn't be able to jump across them.

  "I didn't like that part of my training," Mathias muttered to himself as he shouldered his way into a building.

  People inside looked up from the lunch that they had been eating and gasped at the commotion of a man ensconced in a dull aura bursting into their quiet afternoon meal.

  Mathias didn't pause as he passed through the front of the restaurant that he had randomly entered. Making his way into the kitchen, he ran around it until he found the stairs up.

  "Hey, you can't go up there!" a cook shouted.

  Mathias waved a gun at him as he went by and bounded up the stairs.

  The stairwell took him all of the way to the top, but the access to the roof was locked. As he shouldered into it, it didn't even budge. Lowering the carbine and taking a few steps back, he put a few bolts into the locking mechanism until light from outside leaked through.

  Putting his shoulder into it again, the door burst open, and he was out on top of the buildings.

  "There he is!" he heard somebody shout from across the way.

  There were teams of what seemed to be sharpshooters with long rifles taking up positions overlooking all of the roads. Before they could react, Mathias took off running and jumped the gap to the first building.

  He managed to keep his balance as he landed. Breathing heavily from the adrenaline and exertion, he kept running. His footfalls made a crunching noise as he went.

  The almost serene harmony of his breathing and running was shattered as plasma bolts started to lance out from across the street. Bolts whizzed past his head and forced him to crouch before his next jump.

  This forced him off balance, and when he landed on the other rooftop, he rolled two times before he regained his feet and leapt back up. With the carbine, he fired randomly towards where the sharpshooters were taking aim at him. He was rewarded with seeing them dive behind cover as his own plasma bolts came within inches of them.

  Another jump and he was on the next rooftop. The breathing and the crunching were calming to Mathias, but he didn't have any time to let it soothe him before more plasma fire impacted the ground in front of him.

  Dancing around the bolts, he leapt for the next building. Performing a counter turn as he arced through the sky, he brought both of his weapons to bear. He unleashed a fusillade of plasma as he kept spinning. He landed on his back, kicked his feet up, and performed a back flip by using his momentum. When he landed on his feet, he spun around, fired a few more bolts with his pistol, and kept running.

  He was almost there. He had two more gaps to jump before he could disappear into the squalor that was the zone around the landing pads. Sticking up above the ramshackle buildings, Mathias could see his ship calmly awaiting his return. There was a slight distortion, like that from a hot road, coming off the hull. The shields were active.

  Another leap, another crunching landing punctuated by dodging incoming gunfire. He sidestepped, bobbed, and weaved his way to the next jump.

  As he leapt across, a plasma bolt sailed in and caught him in the left shoulder, right above his heart. It added a spin that he wasn't ready to correct for, and he went sprawling out across the rooftop. Shaking his head, he was slow getting up. His shield was a furious red.

  He thought about how close he was. If only he was a little closer.

  In response, he heard the roar of the engines on his ship. George was coming to pick him up.

  "Just hold on, Matty," George said. "This isn't the most nimble thing in atmosphere, but I can make it work."

  He slid over to behind the lip of the roof to afford himself some more cover. Peering over it, he saw men shouting and waving where to go. That was when he saw what had hit him. Over towards the landing pad, hidden amongst the dilapidated buildings, there was what appeared to be a machinegun nest.

  His suspicions were confirmed when a stream of plasma bolts lanced out and ate into the cover he was behind. He cursed to himself and pictured the location in his mind.

  "Target confirmed," George said solemnly. "I've got it."

  A small anti-personnel weapon popped out of the bottom of the transport as it rumbled overhead the nest. It rained death down on the men that were preparing to fire another burst at Mathias, forcing them to dive for cover. The building they had set themselves up in smoldered and smoked by the time George was done. The nest was silent.

  Mathias looked back the way that he had come and saw armored men running and leaping towards him. Rolling onto his stomach and holstering his pistol, he took the carbine in both hands. He shouldered it, gripped it firmly, took aim, and then fired.

  His aimed fire was accurate to a fault. Bolts splashed into groins of running men, armpits of men that were jumping; men that stopped to take aim caught a bolt to an exposed join. They started crumpling, and their resolve visibly wavered. Those that weren't shot grabbed their fallen comrades and dove for cover.

  Mathias heard thumps as the rumble of his transport came closer. He saw the canisters as they impacted the rooftops around him. Smoke started billowing out of them as George went into a hover and lowered down to Mathias.

  A metallic ladder quickly descended. Grabbing onto it, Mathias threw the carbine over the edge and started clambering up it.

  "You're not going anywhere, Mediator!" Mathis heard Davison shout over the sound of the engine.

  Turning back to look, one hand holding the ladder and the other one free, Mathias saw Davison leveling a carbine at him from just inside the ring of smoke.

  "I'm afraid that I am, Davison," Mathias shouted. "As to my sentence, consider it carried out."

  Davison's eyes went wide as the bolt of plasma from the pistol Mathias had only just grabbed mere moments before burned into his chest. He fell backwards into the smoke and disappeared.

  Mathias finished climbing up the ladder and into the transport. He dogged the hatch and made sure the ladder safely retracted. He was able to hear small weapons fire harmlessly impacting the protective shield of the transport.

  "George," Mathias said.

  George coalesced in front of Mathias.

  "Yes?" he responded.

  "Send a report to the station overhead that this planet is now under Federation quarantine until after the investigation," Mathias said as he turned off his personal shield and stepped out of the jumpsuit he was wearing.

  "Consider it already done," George nodded.

  "And please, be sure to impress upon them to importance of the quarantine. Put extra emphasis on the fact that the investigation will include a careful audit of their books."

  George smiled and nodded before disappearing into thin air.

  Cracking his neck and stretching out his aching joints, Mathias stepped into the sleep chamber against the wall. He grabbed the visor and mask from the resting location up above his head. Lowering it down, he took a deep breath before sealing it in place. The visor lit up to show a full view around the ship. It was a little disorienting at first, but he quickly got used to it.

  Glancing around, he saw that they were steadily racing for the freedom of open space.

  "How long do you think I'm going to sleep this time, George?"

  "For all I know, it could be years, Matty," George said solemnly.

  "Let's hope not," Mathias said. "By the way, you never did tell me how long I was asleep before waking up."

  "Are you sure you even want to know?" George asked.

  "No," Mathias said softly. "I guess it's better not knowing. That's what guest lecturers always said at the academy. Do you ever get used to his? Sleeping for generations at a time sometimes?"

  "I couldn't say. The shortest of times can feel like an eternity to me, and the longest of times
can be an instant."

  "Sounds like what it's like to be a Mediator then," Mathias nodded. "At least, that's what the stories have told me. We are the men that sleep between the stars until we are needed."

  "Well, cheer up, Matty," George tried to say with a happier tone. "Life is never going to be dull for you, and think of all that you are going to see. You're in the Fringe now. There are new things here all the time, and there is certainly no absence of excitement."

  Mathias didn't feel so assured.

  "How many other Mediators are out here with us?"

  "Looks like there are three Mediators out here including you," George responded.

  "So with us being on the Fringe and there only being three Mediators, we should get plenty of action," Mathias said hopefully as he pressed the button to close his sleep chamber.

  "That's the way to look at it, Matty," George said. "You've got to look at the brighter side of things. There's no sense in getting into the doldrums over it. Besides, you'll never be aware of the time you're asleep. It will all be action for you."

  "Guess so," Mathias said. "Wake me when it's time again."

  "I always will, Matty. I always will."

  Mathias's last images before going back into suspended animation were of the plant falling away below them and winking into nothingness as George engaged the faster-than-light engine that took them into the safety of the nothingness between dimensions.

  Copyright © 2013 Jonathan M. Preiss