Five Empires: An Epic Space Opera

by Steven J Shelley

  Bleary-eyed and woolly-headed, he stumbled to the crude shower in the corner and relieved himself. The fuzz at the edges of his mind refused to budge - his slumber had been less restorative than he’d hoped. He also harbored a fierce, relentless hunger.

  “Damn primitives,” he mumbled to himself as he zipped his suit and slipped into his trusty old trench coat. The ‘primitives’ were sleep, food, sex and shelter. All the things that made a man feel more like a man. He’d barely scratched the surface of two of those and hoped to absolutely smash his need for food.

  Not bothering to consult the services directory, Jake blundered his way down a cold, bleak corridor. His nose was unusually keen for a Nostroma, a race famous for olfactory nerve damage due to excessive drug use. He knew there was a noodle kitchen somewhere on the current level, and eventually found it on the northern concourse. He sat up at the counter and waved a finger at the furry Cavan cook.

  A neutral supply station, Vista harbored denizens from all over the galaxy. Intergalactic politics meant next to nothing here, which was firmly the point. Almost everyone who lived in neutral space did so to get away from the stifling demands of their respective governments. Jake considered the Cavan cook busily frying a dubious concoction of meat, noodles and green vegetables.

  The Cava05 were notoriously communal and generally abhorred those who put themselves above the needs of the Technocracy. It must’ve taken a lot for this cook to break away from his people. Jake had seen quite a few Cavan exiles in his time, but then the Cavan Technocracy did exceed ten trillion people.

  There were always misfits and outcasts who slipped through the fingers of the colossal Empires seeking to control them, to shackle them. Jake invariably got along well with these voluntary refugees, probably because he felt like one himself.

  His noodles arrived and he devoured them like a rabid wolf. Draining his dish, he waved another finger at the cook, who dutifully piled more noodles into his greasy skillet. Now that his blood sugar had been restored he was able to turn his mind to more tasks. Vista had just clicked over into its night cycle. Which suited the duellist well enough, considering his friends were more likely to be up and about.

  His ‘friends’. Basko and Nobblar, both of them Nostroma. Though they hadn’t formed a tandem, they usually worked together. The bearded Basko, broad-shouldered for a Nostroma, wasn’t really a duellist or a cybomancer. He was a terrific pilot and had a steady, pragmatic outlook on life. Jake had never liked him very much.

  Basko’s partner in crime was a different cat altogether. Nobblar was lithe but lacked the willowy height of a typical Nostroma male. A nervous type with a fierce intellect, Nobblar was a classic cybomancer for hire. The exertion of neural dominance over others was a useful skill set, and why cybomancers were the best bounty hunters and stand-over men in the galaxy.

  As far as Jake knew the pair were running jobs on Vista. It was only a matter of time before Basko submitted to a tandem with Nobblar, if he hadn’t already. All Nostroma adults were strongly encouraged to find a tandem to work within, but Jake had hated being in tandem with his brother Fashon. Having to obey that homicidal maniac had torn strips off his soul.

  If he hadn’t met Michael and Emilia Danner, Jake might still be bound to his brother, indulging the cybomancer’s dark fantasies and trying to ignore his violent excesses. Jake wondered what Fashon was doing at that moment. Perhaps he’d found a new duellist to work for him. Maybe he was tracking Jake from a distance, waiting for the right moment to strike.

  He felt a chill run down his spine as he realized Fashon would come for him sooner or later. Ever feckless and arrogant, the cybomancer would have taken Jake’s betrayal very badly. Still, there was nothing for it now. Jake had a job to do and he couldn’t afford to spend his time looking over his shoulder. He’d been told several times that he was a supremely relaxed character - now was the time to put that famous equanimity to good use.

  If Basko and Nobblar were on Vista Supply Station right now, they’d probably be enjoying some down time in the leisure sector. Traveling Nostroma rarely circulated their wrist pad details, so Jake would need to find them the old school way - in person. He pushed himself away from the kitchen counter with an appreciative nod to the cook.

  Nursing a full belly and an increasingly functional mind, Jake rode a drop shaft up to the leisure sector. He smiled at the flickering sign warning visitors to stow their weapons in a holding chute. The security measure was about as useful as the abandoned guard post he walked through. Vista Security had given up trying to prevent crime on the station - it was far cheaper to let local inhabitants run their own unique brand of justice.

  In Jake’s experience, the natural justice of a lawless community was remarkably efficient at solving problems as they arose. Of course, such systems descended into chaos in larger settlements, but Vista was still small enough to reap the benefits of vigilante justice. All the owners needed to provide was a functional dock facility and reasonably clean infrastructure. The rest was entirely up to those who called the station home.

  The corridors darkened as Jake headed deeper into the leisure sector. He could feel the muscular throb of synth music somewhere beneath him. He rode a drop shaft to a club called XXNO and made his way through a dark room alive with sweaty bipeds. He could see the vivid blue skin of the Aegisi along with the tufted fur of the Cava05. There were also humans, lizards and other subjugate species. A sprinkling of Nostroma stood out in the crowd but Jake couldn’t see Basko or Nobblar.

  The duellist was familiar with clubs like this one. He’d spent much of his early youth embarking on week-long drug binges, but those days were long gone. Originally evolved from humans, over time the Nostroma had lengthened their life span to a point where they now lived twice as long as their progenitors.

  And yet Jake’s harsh reality was that he was entering middle age. He’d detected a subtle slowdown in the time it took to be ‘gun ready’. For a duellist, that would inevitably see him killed. Once he found all the Catalysts, he was fairly sure his days of violence were over.

  Jake allowed his senses to devour the ambiance of the room. The vivid euphoria masked all the usual emotions that churned away in a drug-fueled subconscious. Fear. Anger. Regret. Jake winced as he was assailed with a primitive smell, an animal stench. The bodies swarming all around him suddenly seemed hideously ugly and pointless.

  He clenched his jaw tightly, regretting his mental lapse. Once upon a time, his neural abilities allowed him to tap into the positive energy of a club like this. Feed on it like a parasite. But now all he ever got was the dark side, the rank miasma that only an aging man could identify. He closed his mind once more, none the wiser for his exploration.

  Needing a quiet space, Jake ascended a spiral staircase. He stepped over various prone figures as he made his way into a pitch black alcove on the mezzanine. The throbbing synth was less pervasive here and allowed the Nostroma to breathe more freely.

  He blinked as an enormous image spread before his eyes. Fragile indigo petals surrounded a furiously erect stamen. The words ‘Blue Orchid’ flowed into his body and out the other side. Jake shook his head and moved further into the darkness - he hated immersive advertising. Still, at least now he knew who was running XXNO.

  Blue Orchid was a leisure cartel run by humans. As a subjugate species, humans would never be able to operate in systems colonized by any of the Big Four, but they had managed to get a foothold on some of the neutral supply stations.

  Jake had never had much time for humans, finding them painfully lacking in mental discipline. It was surely one of the reasons they hadn’t managed to recover from their obliteration by the Yeneri all those centuries ago. Still, they had survived, whilst the Yeneri were stone cold extinct. There was something to be said for plain, dogged survival.

  Jake picked his way through a series of divans where patrons busied themselves with frisson kits. The acrid smell of cheap starter packs was one he was keen to avoid. If he was a better ma
n he’d implore these vulnerable drug users to avoid poor quality frisson before their organs were eaten away from the inside.

  But then, he wasn’t really a better man.

  A rectangle of blue light drew Jake’s gaze - an open door in the corner of the alcove. He stepped through instinctively, sensing he might find answers ‘back of house’. He padded down a maintenance corridor lit by tubes of cool blue light.

  Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, his right index finger brushed against the butt of Lust. It was rare for a Nostroma to be lured into a trap, but it was certainly possible. The galaxy was becoming more dangerous by the year.

  The duellist stopped at a small courtyard with a high ceiling. The blue glow tubes illuminated a series of glass tanks along the wall. Humidifiers. An assortment of lichens, mosses and ferns were growing within, flourishing in the dank conditions.

  “Midnight flora from Ginan VII,” came a female voice. Jake spun around, annoyed that he hadn’t detected the human female. A young woman sat on top of the tank by the door he’d just entered. She wore leather pants and some kind of open brassiere on top. Her breasts sloped elegantly in the near light, the nipples erect against the cold.

  31

  Her face was a picture of self-satisfaction as she drew a perfumed arello to her lips and sucked heavily. Her jet black hair was cut short into an ear length bob. Jake felt a tremor at his groin and chided himself. This human had achieved precisely what she set out to do.

  “Charmed,” Jake said with a smile, determined to appear on top of things even if the reverse was true.

  The girl smiled. It combined sex with a particular lethality that Jake found irresistible.

  “My name is Mandie,” she said in a flat, grating voice. “Mandie Flane.”

  Jake scratched his ear before reaching for his own arello. Smoke clouds mingled in the moist room.

  “That name is familiar,” he said. “If I gave a damn about humans I might remember what you do.”

  If Mandie was thrown by the insult she didn’t show it.

  “I run errands for Blue Orchid,” she said softly.

  “Lemme guess,” Jake purred. “The current errand involves me.”

  Mandie smiled. “You’re on the radar,” she admitted.

  “Is that right?” Jake asked, stifling a surge of anger. “Strange that Ajon Prime would turn to humans for this kind of job.”

  He made a point of looking Mandie up and down.

  “You’re out of your depth,” he said in a neutral voice, as if he was delivering a medical report. At that moment Mandie held the whip handle - he’d strayed down a dark corridor without anyone knowing where he was. Loaded with inflections of dissonance, the insult was designed to sow fear into the human’s mind. There was no other species more vulnerable to Nostromic attack. Jake was rewarded with a slight grimace. He smiled.

  “You’d better come with me,” Mandie said, abandoning her game play. Jake had won the first battle and would need to keep winning if he intended to walk away from XXNO with his life.

  As he threaded a dark passage behind Mandie, eyes fixed firmly on her pert buttocks, Jake tensed his body for battle. Detaining a Nostroma, a duellist no less, was no small matter. The Nostroma valued their freedom of movement very highly. Blue Orchid would need one hell of a good reason to detain him.

  Mandie stood aside to let Jake through to an immense chamber supported by several round pillars. Judging from the size it might have been an old cooling room below the station’s power core. Energy tech had long outstripped the need for such chambers.

  Standing in the middle of the cooling chamber was a hunchbacked Nostroma wearing an emerald green utility suit. His thin face was split by a barbed smile. Nobblar.

  Jake grinned as he strode through shallow pools of water. Apparently the chamber still trapped moisture fairly well.

  Instead of heading straight to his old “friend”, Jake turned a sharp left and padded through the pillars. He maintained a slow, deliberate pace, the sound of his heavy boots echoing through the chamber. He heard the rustle of fabric before the attack came. He raised an elbow and felt contact against something soft. A human jaw. The man stumbled back into a pillar and Jake followed up with a punch to the belly. The Blue Orchid goon dropped to his knees, his pale blue suit rippling in the half light.

  “Expensive tech,” Jake murmured. “Pity you don’t know how to use it.”

  The duellist stepped behind the cover of the pillar as something impacted the other side. He kept low and scrambled to investigate. A small dart was wedged in the hard ceramic. Tranquilizer or poison. Didn’t really matter. He launched his powerful body into a sprint, racing through the pillars. He’d already sowed uncertainty in the mind of the second attacker - now it was time to create panic. A moving target was hard to hit at the best of times. When that target was coming for you, only ice-cold nerves could get the job done. Humans invariably failed in this regard.

  Jake detected a slight movement from the corner of his eye and made a beeline for the Blue Orchid operative brandishing a palm harpoon. Such weapons were highly sophisticated in the right situation. This wasn’t it. Jake closed the distance with frightening speed and grabbed hold of the attacker’s wrist. He slammed the woman’s hand into her face, almost knocking her out with her own weapon. A forceful shove against the nearest pillar was enough to knock her out. Neither henchman would be up for another sneak attack anytime soon.

  Nobblar Dessin hadn’t moved an inch. He was still facing the entrance. Jake had to smile. This man did have nerves of the coldest ice. Only a Nostroma could convey so much with so little. For starters, he was suggesting that he wasn’t intimidated by Jake at all. Secondly, he was telling Jake that Blue Orchid, and by extension their personnel, was not great priority for him.

  Jake positioned himself several yards from the old Nostroma, eyes darting left and right. Mandie was out there somewhere. Hopefully she’d concluded that attacking him wasn’t worth the effort. It would’ve been a pity to ruin that pretty face.

  Jake held his palms out to show that he was finally ready to talk. Nobblar chuckled.

  “Was that really necessary, little sparrow?” he croaked, peering over the top of his wire-framed data goggles. Jake hadn’t seen Nobblar for years. They hadn’t exactly been kind to the veteran. His pinched face was now etched with age lines and his broken posture suggested an injury or two.

  But Nobblar was nothing if not a consummate cybomancer. His use of the term ‘little sparrow’ seemed casual enough, but Jake had flinched internally. Nobblar had been friends with Jake’s parents and had coined the pet name when he was born. What had been affectionate many years ago was now calculated to rankle. And Nobblar was a master of dissonance. Jake was experienced enough to wait until his emotional response had faded before opening his mouth.

  “Blue Orchid, Nobblar?” he asked casually.

  The cybomancer shrugged. “They serve a purpose,” he said.

  “Drug runners?” Jake persisted. Blue Orchid had a long history of leisure facilitation going right back to when humans ran a significant empire. Like most other human operations, the syndicate all but disappeared when the Yeneri began their genocidal attacks. Despite losing much of their leadership, Blue Orchid survived as a minor pleasure outfit offering high class human prostitutes.

  Over the last few hundred years the syndicate had muscled into various drug smuggling operations along the edges of Cavan space. The Cavan Technocracy strictly forbade drug use in an official sense but there was a small, lucrative demand among its upper social strata. This trade was best conducted by non-Cavan outfits as the penalty for smuggling among their own kind was death.

  Humans were popular traders of illegal goods as they had a reputation for competitive prices. The sad fact was that the cost of a human life had dropped considerably over the centuries. The Nostroma routinely used human outfits to run some of the dirtier drug lines, collecting a tidy profit against minimal risk.

&
nbsp; It was probably fair to suggest that humans were exploited almost as much as lizards were. The only thing that prevented humans from taking first prize was their general reluctance to be slaves. They were far too feisty for that.

  “I’m running a few local operations,” Nobblar conceded.

  “Need the credit?” Jake asked innocently.

  Nobblar’s smile was forced. “Hardly, little sparrow. Let’s just say I was waiting for someone.”

  Jake felt a distinct chill in his sternum. With a sinking feeling he realized Ajon Prime had never intended to let him go. Nobblar had been waiting for Jake, no doubt about it.

  “You alone these days, Nobblar?” Jake said calmly, hoping to buy some time.

  “Mostly,” the older Nostroma said in a vague tone. “But not at the moment.”

  Jake felt an excruciating pressure at the front of his neck. It was a thick forearm. He hadn’t heard his assailant at all.

  “Evening, shitbird,” came a familiar voice. It was like ragged sandpaper. Basko Atelia.

  “Basko,” Jake managed to croak. “Haven’t lost your skills.”

  The swarthy Nostroma wrenched his forearm deeper into Jake’s neck. “Not on your life.”

  Which was probably the most Basko had ever said to Jake. They’d always shared a certain professional respect, and there was that bounty they’d completed together on Gyllis III. But Basko had far less need for conversation that the average Nostroma, which meant he was practically mute. Determined and unflappable, his tandem with Nobblar only stood to make him more powerful.

  Basko tightened his pressure until Jake thought he might black out.

  “Release,” came Nobblar’s faint voice. Jake was shoved forward unceremoniously, almost stumbling headfirst into a pillar. He tried not to let his anger show, focusing on his primary goal. He composed himself with dignity, standing upright before Nobblar. Mandie was standing to the right, hands suggestively on her hips. Her breasts were glistening in the moist air. If her presence was designed to distract the duellist, it was working.