Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  Standish nodded. “Many thanks.” She said in a humble tone.

  The figure pulled back his right sleeve to reveal a data-device which he brought up to his lips and issued a set of orders in the same language he had used before.

  “Let us get you on your way.” He said, before leading her out of the office and back out into the grim market.

  Moving down the crowded bazaar another thirty metres, they reached a long clean bench with a towering figure behind it, and behind him a single data screen with a series of images of weapons on it.

  “This is our armoury.” The black-clad figure said proudly.

  Standish looked at him with some scepticism, then back to the man behind the table. “Do you have any rifles?”

  The man looked at her, locking eyes, before looking at her guardian. “Yes.”

  Standish nodded and looked at the figure in black. “Anything?” She asked.

  “Anything.” He replied.

  She nodded and looked towards the man behind the table. “What rapid-fire, long-life plasma rifles do you have?” She asked.

  The man raised the single furry eyebrow he had and gently tapped a device on his wrist until the images on the screen behind him stopped scrolling and were replaced with the picture of a black and grey weapon system.

  Standish looked at the weapon and recognised it at once. “You have that weapon here?” She asked. “And it’s fully functional?”

  The man shook his head. “It’s in our vault.” There was a short pause. “But it is intact with a full energy pack.”

  Standish smiled. The weapon was an Imperial Guards Combat Rifle. They were still in use in the Alliance armed forces, albeit with more specialised units. The rifle was more compact than the average ground combat weapon and ideal for use in urban areas. It had an optics system that offered zoom functions and multiple spectrum viewing. Able to engage targets from zero to five hundred metres with high accuracy, the weapon was ideal for almost any situation.

  “I’ll take it.” She said.

  The armourer looked at Standish for a moment, then to the figure in black. After getting the sign he required, he looked back to Standish. “It will take a few minutes to get here.”

  She nodded in acknowledgement, then looked at the figure in black. “Thank you.”

  He tilted his head in her direction. “You killed eight fearsome adversaries of mine. If I had to use my own men, it would have cost more than that rifle.”

  43

  The Past

  Nadolo Prime

  The transport to Nadolo Prime was an old smuggling vessel loaded with illegal narcotics for the planet and the outlying moons of the system. The mysterious figure in black had assured Standish that to the best of his knowledge, gang activity on Nadolo Prime was restricted to the major settlements, and when the transport finally landed, and the doors opened revealing the parched looking world she had left years ago, Standish felt at home immediately.

  The welcoming party that the Black had promised was there. A two-person security detachment with an old land-speeder to take her to her family property outside Port Sunlight. As they raced over the dry grounds away from the urban area, Standish noted that the two males accompanying her both had a thick black tattoo on their faces. They weren’t from Nadolo, making Standish question how much things had changed.

  When the speeder finally pulled up outside her family property, she hopped down from the transport, rifle gripped tightly in her right hand. She took her bag from the driver and was given a contact disk to use when she needed transportation back to the shipyards.

  Looking at the pink coloured house she grew up in, she smiled, tightened the grip on her kit bag and started walking towards the basic, single-story structure. An old wind turbine spun slowly off to the side of the house, creaking every time it did a complete rotation.

  Walking up to the front of the house, Standish noticed that the front of the building needed a fresh coat of paint, which struck her as odd since her father always prided himself on keeping the house in good order. Shrugging it off, she pushed in the front door and was immediately hit by a smell of warm aromas that reminded her of her youth.

  The front room of the house was as she remembered it. A few chairs and a large couch were the primary features, along with a low table which had a small stack of dusty looking data-pads on it. Setting her bag down in one of the empty chairs, Standish slung the rifle over her shoulder and relaxed her posture.

  “Hello?” She shouted towards the rear of the dwelling and walked through to the kitchen where she found the families traditional fire pit in action with a large pot suspended above it belching out the warm smells.

  Walking to the rear window, she looked out over the vast fields of crops that her family owned and quickly spotted her father and two brothers about fifty metres away from the house, examining the ground. Smiling, Standish pushed open the rear door and walked back out into the warm midday sun.

  Stepping out into the sun, a wave of emotion suddenly surged through her body. She was home, for the first time in over four years, a place that she had never left until she had joined the fleet. She had travelled the stars, visited different worlds but returning home sent a charge of thoughts racing through her mind. A small part of her thought about what would have happened if she had never left, but she knew that wasn’t something worth considering now.

  The ground was hard underfoot, harder than she remembered. There were several water sprinklers in view, but none of them were powered on. Stepping onto a slate stone pathway that ran the length of the field she was now walking through, Standish noticed that the green tips of the buried vegetables looked much paler than she remembered. It was clear that something was off.

  When she was almost twenty metres from her father, her oldest brother Valari turned towards the house and waved at Standish, before walking towards her, her father in tow, his face beaming in delight. Picking up the pace, Standish jogged the rest of the distance to her father, his arms wide open, and wrapped them around her.

  “It’s good to see you, child.” Her father said, his face almost buried in Standish’s chest.

  “It is good to be home, father.” Standish replied, smiling at her father, who kept his arms wrapped around his child.

  “Welcome home.” He said.

  Standish released her grasp on her father then gave her brothers both a firm hug.

  Adjusting the rifle that was slung over her shoulder, then looked around the broad field they were standing in. “What has happened here?” She asked.

  Her father took off the sun hat he was wearing and wiped his brow. “Water shortage.” He said dryly. “Ever since the war started, things have gotten worse.” He turned around and looked over his fields. “Then again, it’s not like we’ve had far to fall.” He looked back towards the house. “Let us go inside and have something to eat.”

  The stew that had been cooking was almost all vegetables. Six years ago, before Standish had left for the fleet, it would have had a higher concentration of meat, but now the only meat inside the pot was from field varmints that her father had killed. Not exactly a hearty meal.

  Sat down on a set of simple chairs around their meal table, the family of four sipped their soup slowly while Standish recanted her experiences since leaving Nadolo. This was slightly laborious for her, as she was more interested in what had happened at home.

  Her father shook his head as he prepared to bring her up to date on all the dramas that had afflicted the planet. “Once the war started, the local garrison was emptied and sent towards the Core.” He looked at his eldest son. “We’re not sure where they went, but one day they were in their barracks, the next they were all gone.”

  “And the governor did nothing to stop this?” Standish asked.

  “Nothing he could do.” Her father took another sip of his soup. “They even took the systems patrol ships, and after that, we were defenceless.”

  “When did the gangs arrive?”

&
nbsp; “The gangs.” Her father closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “They came from the Dalania system. There seems to be a large city there with lots of criminal syndicates, and once word spread that this system was unprotected, they swooped in.” He looked out the nearest window. “Old Dona down the way said that the syndicates swarmed several systems with their pirate ships and gunmen.”

  “So, the Black have been here since the war started?” Standish asked.

  “No.” Valari answered. “First it was the Blue, then the Yellow. Now the Black.”

  Standish looked over at her rifle that was laid on the ground just within her arms reach. “And what do they do? The Black?”

  “They imposed a tax. We pay with allocating a portion of our land to their narcotics harvest.” Her father replied.

  “But you said you have a water shortage.” Standish rebuked. “How can you afford to grow more crops?”

  “The drugs don’t require much water, our rich soil supplies most of their needs.”

  “And that’s it?” She asked.

  “The cost of goods in the local markets have all been set by the Black, and the prices are much higher than before you left.” Her other brother Valent said.

  “And the local law, they’ve done nothing in all this time?”

  “The Blue killed all the law when they arrived. Chopped the bodies up and displayed them around the villages.” Her father shook his head. “There hasn’t been law or order here in quite some time.” He glanced over at the rifle that Standish had brought with her. “I’m surprised that they let you down here armed.”

  Standish smiled. “I am on good terms with the Black.” She replied.

  Her father laughed. “I haven’t heard that before.” He shook his head.

  The conversation carried on for two more hours until the sun started to set on the horizon. With the sun gone, the temperatures dropped quickly, and the winds picked up speed across the vast open plains. Standing at the rear of her family home, Standish looked up to the stars, thinking about what must be going on on other planets.

  44

  The Past

  Nadolo Prime

  The next morning Standish used the communications disk she had been given and summoned the land-speeder, which showed up three hours later. She told the two Blacks in the transport that she wanted to take her family to the Avatos waterfalls, which no one in her family had ever seen, as they were almost one-thousand kilometres away.

  The two males took a moment to discuss the request, not sure if that was part of their charter, but they finally agreed. The journey would take six hours. They first crossed the arid plains where Standish’s family home was located, then the lush fields of the vale. In the distance, the continental mountains started to rise, finally giving an idea of where their final destination lay.

  The journey was the most protracted Standish had taken in some time over solid ground. Even though she had travelled hundreds of light-years across the stars since leaving Nadolo, those trips had been quick, and without incident, that, of course, was ignoring all the waiting in space lounges she had had to endure, and all the dreadful space stations she had visited. This was finally a chance for her to switch her mind off and watch the scenery drift by. And to be taking this journey with her father and brothers made it all the more special.

  When they finally reached the falls, they did not disappoint. There was a large observation deck with an excellent view of the highest known waterfall in what was once the Galactic Empire. The waters that tumbled over the edge of the fall turned almost white by the time they reached the massive pool at the bottom that had a nearly endless number of caves and underground tributaries in it that led under the surface of the continent. Feeding on melted ice in the mountains, the waterfall was the source of much life in the part of Nadolo Prime that Standish had grown up in.

  The two Blacks that had accompanied Standish and her family finally appeared to relax when they reached the falls, and while they didn’t join them for a picnic, they did loosen up enough to toss a ball between themselves for amusement for a while, before eating their own meal.

  Once their picnic was concluded, Standish’s father asked the drivers if they could take a slightly more scenic route back to their farm, and after some checking of a data-pad and its map feed from a satellite in orbit, a southernly path was chosen, through a broad valley that cut its way along a deserted stretch of land far from both the continents largest towns and spaceport.

  Reaching the valley, the land-speeder raced along the hard-packed ground that spent half the time in the shadows of the enormous walls of the canyon that rose up on either side of the ten-metre long racer. The valet was one of the wonders of Nadolo Prime that were written about in the adventure tour guides published in the Core, but to Standish, it was just another part of her home-world that she had never visited.

  Coming out of the bottom of the valley, the party found themselves looking at the wide-open plains that dominated most of the planet. They were dry and almost entirely hard-packed sand. Looking behind them, Standish could barely see the mountains where the waterfall was in the distance.

  “Home.” She said, tapping the driver on his shoulder.

  He nodded in silence, then programmed the return course into the speeders navigational computer, then hit the execute button and away the machine went. Everyone put on their dust goggles as the transport accelerated over one hundred kilometres per hour, cutting across the near featureless surface of the planet.

  It was another chance for Standish to switch off her brain, and just drink in the never-ending scenery that whizzed past at high speeds. In some respects, her homeworld reminded her of Guhr 8-Nine, dry and barren like so many of the realms of the old Empire that had never been terra-formed into a lush oasis.

  The journey gave her the opportunity of bonding with her father and brothers, and even though they looked asleep when Standish gave them a glance, she was glad to be doing something with them other than sending the random data message that may or may not get through, and considering the current climate in the galaxy, it was impossible to say how good communications in and out of the system would be in the months to come.

  As night started to descend across the land, Standish felt the speeders rather meagre automatic heaters come on, blowing warm air onto her legs. Looking towards the east, she could see the sun setting in the distance, its orange glow still casting light over the barren lands which they raced across. The sense of hope and promise that accompanied every sunrise seemed to die with the setting of the sun in the distance. It was a foreboding warning about the state of play on Nadolo, and something that Standish did not take lightly.

  Just before the sun’s ray disappeared over the horizon, the speeder automatically activated its nocturnal running lights, which were set on their dimmest levels, projecting a beam of light just twenty metres in front of the racer. At the same time, a very rudimentary three-dimensional image was displayed of the terrain they were moving towards on the view screen in between the two drivers. The green and black pixelated image showed nothing but flatlands for as far as the sensors could reach.

  Looking up towards the darkening sky, Standish started to search for the stars she remembered seeing from her parent's yard as a child. The constellations were still there, it was just Standish that was a little out of position. Thinking back to her Rescue Technician training, Standish calculated her position to her parent's house based on her memory of the star positions, and if her calculations and memory were correct, they were still a few hours ride away.

  Smiling, Standish continued to scan the night’s sky looking for anything of interest. The system had never been a beacon of activity, but she could see the clear signs of a ship entering the atmosphere and heading towards the planet’s surface. Perhaps it was a trader or a Yellow raiding party. More than likely it was a Black transport delivering goods to the surface.

  Looking back down to her family, her brother Valari appeared f
ast asleep resting on her father's shoulder, while the old man’s tired gaze stared ahead. Catching his eye, he smiled at her, and reached over and put his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze.

  Standish smiled back and put her right hand on her father's shoulder. It was good to be home. It had been too long, and the worst part of it all was that she knew she needed to report to Killious before too long.

  45

  The Present

  Fury System

  There was a single beep, then the cockpit was suddenly filled up with the light of a million stars shining brightly in the space above the ship. The Fury system used to be home to some of the largest shipyards in all the Empire. Those had been destroyed a long time ago, and now the system was under the control of the Melcore Combine, a fact that became evident very quickly to Standish.

  “Unidentified vessel.” The voice was loud and harsh. “You have entered Melcore Combine controlled territory.”

  Standish checked her screens. There was a single freighter bearing down on her at full speed. The ship appeared to have been heavily modified with external weapons mounted along the hull. It probably wasn’t great in a fight, but against her vessel, it was more than enough.

  The next voice over the net was worse. “Turn engines off. We board.”

  Standish rolled her eyes and did as she was told.

  It took a bit of work, but eventually, an umbilical between the two ships was established, and a creature in a space-suit entered her ship, pistol on one hip, hatchet on the other.

  Popping the front of his helmet, the creature looked at Standish, then around the chamber they were standing in.

  “You alone?”

  Standish nodded. He was speaking Universal, but he had a thick accent. Probably poorly educated.

  “What you want here?”

  Standish looked the male over. He wasn’t much taller than she was, but powerfully built.