Twin suns of Carrola (Starshatter Book 2)

by Dark Knight

  “This is Clan Boss Vala, my Lord Captain. I have returned from assignment and have much to report!” – She hesitated for a second but then continued almost angrily stating – “I require a permission to dock!”

  What she heard back was, of course, the voice of her captain. Devoid of emotion in stark contrast of Vala’s own swirling anger that all but consumed her right now, the taz’aran calmly replied:

  “You have permission to dock, Clan Boss Vala. I notice that the number of ships in your command have somewhat... lessened. What is the meaning of this?”

  “My lord, we’ve met our enemy and they were nothing but a menagerie of vile monsters! Aleska star warriors under your employ have faced head on a dreaded Terran Psy-corps telepath and a real space vampire! Devouring the life energy of my people was a half-aryan star marine monster, and not an ordinary one, but a survivor from the fearsome crew of ’Bremen’! This starship that we’ve faced today had too among their crew a Spacer pilot.”

  Vala could hear her captain’s now angered breathing, though she felt that his ire wasn’t directed at her and the Aleska warriors under her command.

  “Join me in my personal chambers, Vala. We need to discuss, plan, and strategize about a great many things.”

  Signing off, her captain’s voice had calmed a bit. It was as if he realized the grimness of them facing such a gathering of skilled and deadly Terrans.

  Chapter 6

  The Last Crow

  A lone human dismounted his strangely designed bike and stretched his long, muscular limbs. Compared to an average middle-aged human man he was very buff. All that mass though, it didn’t strike those who studied him as artificial, nor the man seem to have any cybernetics. When those who fought off the fear of his rough outlook and went out to ask him how he got that big, he’d answer with one word – training. If the buggers persisted and actually went on his good side, like buying the man a beer or better yet feeding him meat, he would tell them the annoyingly dull secret of his buffness. Five mile run a day, every day, five hundred push-ups, five dozen pull-ups, a hundred squats for good measure just so that your ass-cheeks won’t flap behind when you push hard the accelerator pedal on your bike. Bending the old megasteel bar was just the cherry on top, but that was a secret the man always kept to himself, no matter how well they fed him or how many beers he was treated to.

  His eyeglasses were oddly shaped but reflected well the powerful sunlight Carrola’s two suns were trying to bake everything alive with. Short reddish hair and bushy, unkempt beard kept the rest of his head safe from the unforgiving suns. He looked towards the ruined Terran colony and spat on the ground angrily – there were supposed to be people here! The man needed food and fuel for his ship’s FTL module. Now, he was stranded here on that planet, and John Mackenzie didn’t like this one bit! After landing here, the lone biker soon found out that the colonists were all killed. That, or dragged away on board some slave ship, kicking and screaming. Had his ship’s sensor array not been damaged in his last scuffle with some pirates, he’d be able to detect all that crap from orbit.

  He looked at the back of his bike; tied up there was an alien helmet he’d found earlier dangling off a tree branch. The more he looked at it and inspected the jagged alien runes it was inscribed with, the angrier Mack got. Filthy taz’arans! These slimy failures were leaving trails of dirty footprints everywhere he’d usually traveled. Fringe space was a large expanse, but he and they had clashed on multiple occasions already. Every time when Mack actually found some place to lay his head down, there soon enough the holes-for-ears popped up, patrol ships in tow and chased him away.

  The biker mounted his machine and revved its highly modified Tesla engine. Produced in a small factory back on Earth, that engine was the pride and joy of a company called Harley Davidson. Native to his own nation-state of America, the boys and girls who engineered those new Tesla engines were aiming high. Reliability, power and high quality materials used in its construction made the engine block a must have for any space biker. Loud whistling sounds boomed over the empty farm fields and his machine leaped forward. Behind him, the bikes’ wide rear tire made of solid megasteel, left a huge trail in the dirt. Now again on the move, Mack was no longer feeling like a baked potato, while his face and neck were red and hurting from sunburn the speed he moved with made things bearable. Along the way, he’d passed through a watermelon field that had been expertly planted and maintained, but sadly, the local critters had helped themselves to any fruits left after the colonists vanished. Mack did find one good hand scanner and a laser pistol though. The gun was oddly small and at first, he’d thought it belonged to a kid. Then realized it was probably the handgun of a bunny or hamster farmer.

  He liked the small buggers. He used to give rides on his bike to their kids, and whenever he traveled to “Murphy’s Landing” Mack sneakily brought them beer and other stuff, like alien candy. Kids here called him Uncle Mackie as they ran laughing and giggling, happily climbing all over his bike and him. The duties of a Patron were perhaps wasted on a space biker, as some might say, but Mack chose to disagree. He did what he had to – yes he was a criminal in the eyes of the Law, all his brothers and sisters were, yet he was a Patron too. The very thought of somebody hitting those kids or worse yet, dragging them into the hold of a slave ship made him grit his teeth.

  Last time when he was here, he’d visited his old mentor – Alberto. That ancient fossil was like a father to him, back from the days when he was but a runt.

  His childhood wasn’t happy, but it was relatively safe compared to what other kids had to endure. The unfortunate ones who were grabbed by the slavers during the 69’s pirate invasion. Exactly when he was born. His own mother he never knew because she gave birth to him in the ruins of Sheridan Wyoming. Alone. Mack was later told that her legs were crushed and after he was born, crawled a good mile over the debris-covered road towards the local clinic. Died along the way she did. Baby Mack was picked up by that same Alberto, a soldier then, and part of the local National Guard infantry unit. Rifleman 1st class Alberto was more of a sniper than an ordinary soldier. Using an anti-tank rifle, alone, he killed one whole section of aliens before his unit was wiped out. He then roamed the ruins in search of survivors and found baby Mack by chance alone. During these days the nation-state of America had enough money and resources to restore all of the damage that the invader had inflicted upon its infrastructure and cities.

  Sheridan’s population of roughly fifteen thousand souls had been virtually exterminated. In fact, Mack was probably its one and only resident still left amongst the living. There were other towns and cities who badly needed reconstruction and the minimalistic, but the highly effective government of the USA rightly decided to take action – spending resources where they would actually do some good. Old man Alberto took the kid and basically adopted him. Since he couldn’t serve any longer because of nerve damage, Alberto was discharged with honors. He returned back to his home and garage in the small town of Liberty, Texas. A capable mechanic and a biker himself, Alberto taught little Mack everything he knew about everything. He practically grew up in the saddle of a bike. His toys were the tools that were rolling around on the ground and his playground, Alberto’s garage itself.

  Therein laid the problem for Mack – he fell in love with the bikes, a little too much for his own good, perhaps. There were those kids, orphans like him, who formed clubs dedicated to riding bikes, and each day they would race against each other. For control of territory, for each other’s bikes, the roads and many other things. Mack remembered those days fondly. Despite the chaos and mischief he and the rest of those runts were inflicting upon the good citizens of Liberty. With the exception some old assholes who threatened to beat them up, nothing bad had happened. Probably because those same people understood what was like to have nothing and no one to call father or mother. The boys were rowdy, but nobody actually did anything worse than drive fast as hell with his noisy bike at 3am in the morning. Also, t
he boys worked all over the town’s businesses and besides the biking that was going on all over, no other crime happened. At least not most of the time that is. Everyone was as happy as they could possibly be after the chaos of a major alien invasion, and one decade of planetary reconstruction.

  They spent all of their youthful energy building, modifying and racing their bikes. At first, the machines they were using were equipped with the phased down, discarded internal combustion engines. With scrap yards full of parts, it was easy for the tech-savvy kids to each build themselves a ride. His own club, the “Black Crow Brotherhood” was the biggest and the baddest of them all. Mack remembered how he thought of the name. It was because of a small group of crows who nested near Alberto’s garage. The birds were smart and stuck together, helping each other with the bits of food they snagged from people. And they remembered! Those who chased them away, or destroyed their nests, they attacked together when they could. Even a single crow would fight to the very end. Mack was intrigued and for a short time devoured everything related to crows he could find in Liberty’s public library. They were proper bastards for sure, but always backed each other up in a pinch. Intelligent and vengeful, the birds could make your life literally full of shit if you’d angered them.

  The runts around him quickly sewed their new club colors onto the backs of their jackets. It was a large, and obviously very black crow, its eyes red and sharp menacing claws drenched in blood. The beak was open and head turned to the side. Around it, there was a circle in which they wrote their club’s motto – “Ride free or Die trying!”

  Not surprisingly, none could stand against them, either when racing on the streets or fighting for territory. Unmatched in everything, the Crows soon generated such envy that the rest of their competitors banded together against them. In the racing battle that ensued, young Mack was pitted against his toughest adversary and he was winning. His rival then, in desperation, kicked Mack’s ride and tragically lost control of his own. The kid splattered his burning guts all over the nearby wall. Of course, after that stunt people didn’t want to have anything to do with the bike clubs. The government sent their goons to remove them from Liberty.

  Back then, those local sheriffs were the last thing remaining of the long dead Big Govt. A new organization called Internal Security, or I-sec for short, was being formed entirely from volunteers. Most sheriffs who were decent had, of course, joined I-sec long ago and helped the new group organize, sharing their generations-long, priceless law enforcement experience. But not all lawmen were such as them, and soon there was a big and bloody mess looming on the horizon. The local sheriffs had deputized every one of their lowlife buddies and the yahoos came armed to the teeth.

  The old guard was going out of business and hated every bit of it. Most were corrupt pieces of shit, who misused their positions of power and authority – they easily got away with racketeering and all other sorts of abuse, bullying small town populations. In an effort to show that they could still “do the job”, the idiots overdid it. Mercilessly beating everyone they caught, the coppers made a lot of those kids invalids for life. Despite their original orders, those bastards actually used lethal force against the teenage bikers. Instead of an orderly arrest and relocation, the teens were shot at point-blank range, and many of them died. That did it for his guardian Alberto and the people of Liberty and they grabbed their own guns attacking the posse. It was a battle Mack would remember till his last day because it was then when his club gain its notoriety. Instead of leaving the already corralled coppers for the I-sec agents to arrest – they attacked them. Riding on their custom bikes, the “Black Crow Brotherhood” killed all of them and escaped in the desert when the real lawmen arrived. Because of that, the Crows had gained a notorious reputation amongst I-sec agents for years to come.

  Fringe space colonists knew better.

  After the Liberty massacre, he, the rest of the Crows, and whomever wished to join left Earth, and traveled towards the newly colonized Minarchy space. They then reformed themselves into a space motorcycle club or SMC for short.

  Places like Apple crate, Murphy’s Landing, and many others became their club’s territory. People paid them protection money whenever some band of alien gangster wannabes tried to push them around. Also, he and his boys could always raid the pirates, druggers and other alien fucktards lurking around. Those were the days! Mack quickly gained a huge price on his head. As a matter of fact, most, if not all, of his boys were wanted by some Fringe space criminal syndicate, pirate clan, or alien law enforcement group. They could never get them though. Every time when the Crows had trouble, the colonists helped them.

  His club had hiding places everywhere. Yes, some of his brothers were rowdy and rough around the edges, but that was occupational. The Crows were free. Nothing else interested them but being able to do what they desired, when they wanted, and ride where they wished. They lived away from central colonies and could effing do close to anything without any serious consequences or obstructions from the Law. Or at least that was what he and his brothers had thought.

  A month after one of their particularly vicious raids deep inside Taz’aran Imperial space, the club was assaulted full force. Somehow the slimy, insidious taz’arans managed to find all of their hiding places, orbital installations, and starships. In a devastating multi-pronged assault, the aliens overwhelmed and slaughtered all of his brothers.

  All except him.

  Mack was then visiting a lady friend. Avern’a seer called Lena’la had called him to discuss some important issue and since she was his club’s space witch Mack had to personally pay her a visit. He took his modified GAV that was, in fact, a custom built grav-attack vehicle capable of orbital flight. His guys had fashioned for him an FTL “crutch” – a module with Gate-drive and space engines that he docked his “Blood Crow” with. The GAV itself had little cargo space, and instead of a troop-carrying module, he had his chopper personal guns and ammunition secured there. With no place for a bunk bed Mack usually slept in the cockpit. Otherwise, the GAV, like all vehicles of that class was ridiculously overpowered and bristling with weapons. Similar in concept to the combat helicopters of old, the GAV utilized cutting-edge grav tech. It allowed crazy maneuverability, good armor protection, and when controlled by a capable pilot one could easily wreck an entire armored squadron. His own had a twin 20mm auto-railgun turret on the nose, two pulse lasers on the wings, loads and loads of missiles, mag-rail launched bombs and even an effin’ mazer. The Blood Crow and his bike were now the last two vehicles left from his SMC’s small arsenal.

  Mack reached Lena’la’s small asteroid cabin only to find her long dead body. Apparently, she’d died of old age in her sleep and being a space witch and all had left him a holo-note. Probably the old prune foresaw at least some small part of what was about to happen and decided to save his hairy ass. Inside the teary holo-note Lena’la explained how sorry she was for everything that was about to happen. Gifted him her black ring too, which he immediately put on his finger. Every single effin’ time when he went there that shitty ring was, like calling him, or whatever. Though this time, when he put it on his middle finger, the thing suddenly looked like a proper old piece of metal. Probably the old cunt was bullshitting him with her witches ways like she always did. What he was positively aware of though, the old prune had placed some sort of a blessing on his beard or something that protected him from annoying telepaths. It was because he and his boys had saved her in a bar on some colony somewhere. Oddly enough Mack was never able to recollect when or where exactly this had happened. But he knew that it happened... somehow. Whatever her motives were, that Avern’a hag had nice stuff, but a little too much for him to simply pick it up and fly away with. Boxes, containers of oddly shaped items, clothes and probably old people’s things that he actually had no desire to look at. The ring though was nice, real nice. Long black metal band, simple, with two red tiny stones encrusted into it. Looked almost like little angry red eyes, that always looked
at ya’ no matter where you were or did.

  Deep in an asteroid field, he received the call for help long after all of his brothers were dead. Traveling back to each different battleground was pointless – the bastards fought to the last with everything they had. Just like the crows their club was named after, they used every sneaky and reckless tactic, all of the weapons in their arsenal. The taz’aran shitheads had paid a heavy price for their victory, but that gave Mack little respite. He would find all of them, those who were responsible for his brothers’ deaths, shove plasma grenades deep inside their asses and watch them burn!

  In his thoughts Mack entertained the possibility that they were betrayed. Somehow the whole scope of the taz’aran operation, the fact that they had managed so masterfully to organize themselves and strike precisely and simultaneously at all of the “Black Crow Brotherhood” sites, was eerie, to say the least. The fucktards were not that good from what he had seen during the many years while The Crows were pillaging, ambushing and overall curb-stomping their smelly green invading asses into space paste. Either they’d suddenly get good, or something else happened. It was an annoyingly angering thought but still, he was alive and spitting, his hands itching to break some necks.

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