by Drew Wagar
Rebecca Weston.
He’d shared that adventure with her, though not out of choice for either of them. She’d been working on her family’s ship when it had been embroiled, purely by chance, in the events surrounding the Q-Bomb. Rebecca had lost what remained of her family at the assassins hand that day. Her father, brother and cousins shot down and destroyed. What about her mother? Jim couldn’t recall her ever talking about her. In truth, there was so much he didn’t know.
Jim had rescued her as the assassin attempted to destroy her escape pod. Rebecca had initially repaid him by smashing him over the head and running off with his ship, but they’d reached an understanding after she’d managed to escape from the assassin by diving into an uncontrolled witch-space jump, but not before destroying four police viper ships with one of the Q-Bombs.
Fortunately for Jim, Rebecca knew her way around a spacecraft. She turned out, rather surprisingly, to be one of the best pilots he’d ever seen in action. After helping dispatch a Thargoid battlecruiser, she’d tenaciously fought the assassin. He was in an arguably superior ship, but had been forced to retreat. Jim had known she was pretty handy at the helm, as she’d achieved a ‘Dangerous’ rating in only a few years in space, but it was only after the event that he realised that she had fought off a very experienced Elite combateer.
She’ll be Elite one day, for certain.
This resulted in a stalemate, with both ships crippled. The assassin had failed in his mission, yet narrowly escaped into witchspace. Rebecca had been very bitter about that, vowing to hunt him down in revenge for the death of her family. The identity of the assassin was never discovered. He, she or it had disappeared as silently as they had arrived. Both Jim and Rebecca presumed the assassin was still alive out there… somewhere.
Both of them had been forced to change their names, submit to hex-editing and leave their previous lives behind in some fashion, bequeathing their names to the by now infamous Q-bomb; The Tyley-Feynman Quirium cascade mine.
Jim had tried to prevent Rebecca from going after the assassin. He smiled involuntarily at the memory of her fierce glare and angry rebuttal. That memory also brought on the cold embrace of melancholy.
“Stay safe. I mean it, I want to come back and see you some day.”
Well, she never had. Not a visit. Not a vid. Not even a text message.
He knew she was still alive, her ship registration was filed with Galcop and anyone could look up location information after it was declassified after a month or so. She’d been travelling around a lot, never staying in one place for long, always on the move, staying true to her trader upbringing. She’d recently graduated to ‘Deadly’ on the old-style ‘Elite’ rating system. She’d visited her home planet of Tianve a number of times, but she’d never come within witch-space range of Onrira. The last indication showed she was heading back towards the North East Quadrant, passing through the troubled central systems like Zadies, Solageon, Esusti and Sotiqu, presumably on some lucrative trading run.
He’d sent a couple of vids, but they had gone unanswered, in fact he’d been able to tell they had not even been viewed.
It’s been two years! She’s moved on, and you need to move on too. For God’s sake find yourself something worthwhile to do and forget her!
The Tru-vid burbled on to itself, switching channels in response to a news flash.
“… and we bring you breaking news on yet another mysterious attack on Galcop staff! Zerz Furvel, Galcop’s chief technician, was killed this afternoon whilst travelling to a conference on Diso when the auto-pilot of his Boa Class Cruiser appeared to go haywire and rammed the ship into Diso Coriolis two!
“It took several hours for rescue staff to penetrate the shattered Boa and get to Zerz, whereupon he was rushed to hospital aboard the space station. Sadly, Zerz Furvel later died partly as a result of his injuries, and partly due to radiation and exposure caused by the failure of on-board systems after the crash. Galcop security has confirmed that the shadow organization ‘The Dark Wheel’ is once again claiming responsibility for the attack.
“Travel in and out of the Diso system remains problematic and doesn’t look to be getting any better in the immediate future. We tried to get a statement out of Galcop, but they declined to comment. Does Galcop have this situation in hand, or have we got a terrorist threat on our hands? Truth is, we don’t know. This is Anna Mereso, at Diso, for the Tionisla Chronicle, Wideband channel three-eight-five-point-two…”
Jim had sat bolt upright, frowning in surprise at the vid-cast. Zerz Furvel! Jim had only met him once, but the name was almost too familiar. Zerz had been the one who had stumbled across his Q-Bomb design schematics, reverse engineered them and constructed the first pair of working prototypes Jim had later ended up stealing aboard the SuperCobra. He was a brilliant man, but misguided in Jim’s view and overly fanatical about the future of Galcop. He, and a bunch of other high level officials, seemed to be paranoid that Galcop’s future was in jeopardy. He’d managed to escape the demise of the military chief of staff by some clever political manoeuvring, but Jim had never forgotten that he’d been at least partially responsible for the death of his friend Geraint, and the abortive coup to attack the Imperial capital – Achenar – and all that had transpired as a result.
Now he is dead too, assassinated by these bizarre people, the Dark Wheel…
Jim couldn’t see what they were hoping to achieve by these high profile murders. Neither could he see how these people were connected, other than they were Galcop officials. What did the Dark Wheel have against Galcop anyway? It was the topic of conversation on a hundred worlds. The Members of the Dark Wheel, or rather those suspected of being members, as it wasn’t an official organisation, had all disappeared without a trace. Galcop was rumoured to be hunting them down covertly.
Jim ran back through his mind all that he knew about the Dark Wheel. According to most reports they were a semi-legendary space unit, star-riders who made it their business to seek the truth behind the plethora of myths and romantic stories that filtered back from all corners of the Universe: fabulous cities, parallel worlds, time travellers, even planets that appeared to be the old ‘heaven’ of Earth legend. The Dark Wheel was as mysterious and as mythical to the traders of the Galaxy as the fabled generation ships.
They were usually discussed in the same breath as that other fairy story: Raxxla; the mythical planet of dreams and false hopes. Of course, any suggestion you took the legend of Raxxla seriously blew all your credibility out of the airlock, so the Dark Wheel, once a fairly respectable troop of space adventurers, had until now been regarded as something as a joke; a bunch of crazy, but harmless, ageing pilots who liked to believe in magic and otherworldly stuff.
Jim had little time for it. As a scientist he believed in empirical fact, not mysticism. There was space, planets, suns, nebulae and a bunch of people trying to make money by dragging stuff through the hard radiation between them all. That was all there was.
The only other fact of interest regarding the Dark Wheel was that it was an invitation only club. You couldn’t go and join up if you just so desired it. It was very much a case of “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”.
Doubt anyone would join up now even if the invitation was platinum plated!
Quite why they had suddenly turned to murdering people was beyond him, it seemed unlikely behaviour for a bunch of half crazy old men.
The door buzzer sounded.
“Come!” Jim called, his attention still focussed on the Tru-vid.
The door slid open, revealing two Galcop guards, armed with rifles. Jim turned in surprise.
“Professor Jim McKenna?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Please come with us, Professor.”
“Why? What’s this all about?” Jim demanded, looking from one to the other.
“Just come with us, Professor,” the first said darkly, heavily. Both guards stepped into the room.
“Now just a minute, you can
’t come in without…” Jim began, standing up and backing towards the rear of the apartment.
Both guards brought up their rifles with a smooth flourish. Jim could hear the power packs humming. These guys were serious.
“Jim McKenna, you’re under arrest.”
Jim stared at them, dumbfounded. “On what grounds?”
“On suspicion of murdering Zerz Furvel.”
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
A trader’s life was not an easy one.
Making a living in the empty wastes of space was a game of chance. Each day was uncertain. Prices rose and fell, societies’ demands changed in a fickle way, sometimes overnight; often making a prized cargo a bunch of useless canisters in a matter of hours. Sometimes it was hard to make a sale. Negotiations on the outer worlds could get interesting, often at the point of a blaster.
The inner worlds, though more automated and more predictable, were costlier. You needed permits, tariffs, taxes, insurance, fees; it was a never ending list. Everything took a slice out of your revenue; increasing your outgoings, denting your profits.
Some folk couldn’t make it and went bankrupt. Others turned to a life of crime, preying on those still in business. The pirates were no romantic swashbucklers; they were desperate people, fighting to stay alive and one step ahead of the law. If you were starving you tended not to look too carefully where your next meal was coming from.
Of course, if you stuck to the more salubrious systems, the ‘Corporates’ and ‘Democracies’, everything usually went swimmingly. You could pretty much guarantee staying alive, though once the officials had taken ninety five percent of your earnings in assorted fees and taxes you might wonder why you’d bothered. You had to pay for that police Viper surveillance.
Lower down the scale the ‘Multi-Government’ societies and ‘Confederations’ were more risky, but less costly and more profitable. You had to take your laser and a pack of missiles with you for those hops, just in case.
If you wanted maximum profits you aimed for the ‘Communist’ and ‘Feudal’ systems. Life was rough here, and you’d be well advised to make sure your ship was kitted out with an ‘iron-ass’, to use the trader vernacular. That meant a ship with boosted shields, a decent beam laser or two, hardened missiles, an ECM, more energy and not least, a damn good pilot.
Of course, only the most financially desperate would even consider venturing into the Anarchic systems to trade. There was hardly any Galcop presence and most of the systems in question featured a menagerie of pirate vessels fighting over anything of value. Short of a military spec fighting ship, it was almost certain suicide.
“Police coming!” D’vlin’s odd voice crackled across from the comm-station. One of his eyes was focused on the scanner, another on the viewscreen and a third was looking at the ship’s timepiece. “Five minutes!”
“Might as well be five years for all the good it will do!” Captain Hesperus hissed crossly, wrapping his tail around his haunches as the Python’s helm swung about. His gamble had failed. He felt the cold clutch of fear cramping his stomach. Either that or it was down to a bad batch of goat soup.
Captain Hesperus, a rather cuddly, yet surprisingly elegant, grey-furred feline from the planet Orrira, started young in his ambition to be inordinately rich and never have to work again. It was fair to say that his career hadn’t quite gone to plan. Caught smuggling narcotics and other associated illegal cargoes by a Galcop sting operation, he’d spent a number of years in Galpen under lock and key. Still convinced the universe owed him a living, he’d continued with a series of complex financial undertakings with scant reference to Galcop or planet-side legislation, which ended up leaving the feckless Hesperus bemused, bankrupt and, at one point, married to no less than eight females of different species and one hermaphrodite lobstoid.
He now was the (almost) legal owner of a rather decrepit Python class cruiser called the Dubious Profit.
Four tough looking Asps in tight formation were now rapidly bearing down on his ship. Another ship was holding back, some kind of large freighter according to the mass signature. Given that all four of the Asp’s had a firm missile lock, Captain Hesperus had reluctantly come to the conclusion that they probably weren’t part of an honour escort for famous space celebrities such as himself.
“Rus!” he snapped out across the intercom. “I need full power now, or we’re all dead!”
There was a peculiar roar from below decks by way of response.
The engine room of the Dubious Profit was inhabited by a blue six-foot-four-inch horned lizard from Inera. Hesperus had enjoyed a very a brief conversation with said lizard when boarding the Dubious Profit for the first time which revealed that the lizard’s name was ‘Rus’, that he was the ship’s chief technician and that the ship’s previous owner owed him eight months back-pay. It took less than three seconds for Hesperus to hire him and all of four seconds for the lizard to let go of his throat and allow air to enter his lungs again.
“Five ships!” D’vlin clicked in horror. “Hell! Novamash! Coming fast!”
D’vlin Nil was a furry, aubergine coloured Reredian insectoid who’d been hired as ship’s system engineer on the basis that he said that he’d worked for the Galactic Navy in the past. Later investigation revealed his work experience was solely concerned with dusting the control consoles of Navy Asps with his furry abdomen. Like most insectoids, he had difficulty in communicating in common speak. He was unable to grasp anything other than verbs, nouns and a variety of swear words in various languages. To be fair, he did know his way around ship’s systems and was good at making temporary repairs. This was skill that was firmly in-line with the general state of play aboard the Dubious Profit.
“Stand down!” came an imperious order over the narrowband from the unknown freighter, “Dump your cargo and you can go free, ten seconds or my boys mess you up good.”
Hesperus had tried all the usual tricks to avoid pirates. Come out of witchspace a fraction early, heel over ninety degrees straight away and torus jump away from the space lane running between the jump point and the planet. Get out of sight. It had worked for him before. Of course, the pirates knew these techniques as well, and must have spotted them coming in. The problem with being away from the space lane was that it would take far longer for any help to arrive, the few police that were about were a long way off.
Four Asps! Why don’t we EVER get any luck?
“Bastard pirates! Stepan, get your claws up here!” Hesperus screeched into the intercom.
“What do?” D’vlin asked.
“We stall! If we dump the cargo we’re broke,” Hesperus said.
“Not dump cargo we dead!” D’vlin retorted, snapping his mandibles together in alarm.
Hesperus hissed and flashed out his molybdenum-coated claws in a warning, grabbed the comm-link and thumbed the transmit button for the narrowband comms.
“Oh, please!” he miaowed across the airwaves. “Our hold grapples are off-line, we’ll need a few minutes to eject, please don’t shoot, please, we’ll do our best for you fine gentlefolk…”
The crew of the Dubious Profit had fallen on hard times. More accurately, they had fallen on worse times. Hesperus had continued his trait of making poorly judged deals, and this, combined with a variety of mishaps, ship breakdowns and plain old bad luck, had forced them into a do or die trading run through the Sotiqu system. A net profit of one thousand, three hundred and fifty credits per tonne was too much for them to resist, particularly when they were flat broke.
“Five seconds,” came the imperious answer from the pirate vessel.
“Canines!” Hesperus snapped, dropping the commlink again. “Didn’t even go for my cute little kitten routine. Blast the closest Asp!”
“We’re fighting?” Stepan said incredulously, emerging from below decks and jumping into the pilot’s chair, sweeping a huge pile of sweet wrappers onto the floor in the process. “Are you mad? What happens if we all get killed? I am not taking
responsibility… ”
Stepan McLane was a large Erbitian feline who applied for a job as navigator. After signing up, it had taken him two days to find the Dubious Profit’s docking bay. Stepan seemed to eat nothing else but Diso’s favourite brand of feline ‘Chewi-bars’ and, for a cat, had lamentable personal hygiene. He made up for it by being a dab hand at combat. He’d claimed he was ‘Dangerous’. This turned out to be literally true, rather than a reflection of his actual Elite combat rating. By coincidence, his Elite combat rating was ‘Competent’, which was missing only the prefix ‘in’ to have been an accurate reflection of his ability rather than his rating.
“Lasers ready,” D’vlin clacked, hitting the boost buttons and watching the charging indicators on the fore and aft laser coils. “All charged.”
“We’ve got to stay alive for four minutes that’s all,” Hesperus hissed. “Fire! And try not to break anything expensive!”
Stepan hit the missile firing circuit and two ECM hardened missiles detached from the lower hull, angling towards the first pair of Asps rushing through space towards them, trailing faint blue ionised plasma from their miniature engines. The Asps turned instantly, their engines flaring as they twisted up, attempting to flee. The ringing tones of an ECM echoed through the bridge, but the missiles continued unabated.
“You used two missiles at once?” Hesperus wailed. “Do you know how much those things cost?!”
“It’s up to you!” Stepan spat back, his hackles rising. “Do you want to be poor and alive, or rich and dead?”
“Neither!” Hesperus hissed.
D’vlin pushed the engines to full power and the Python lurched into forward motion.
“Take them out, lads!” Came the imperious voice.
The third Asp was attempting to shoot down the missiles chasing the first pair of Asps; the fourth Asp was rapidly closing on them. It took a full blast of the Python’s high intensity military laser. It rolled aside, but not before it inflicted a fierce assault on their forward shields.
