Soldiers of Fortune

by Joshua Dalzelle

  The trader, a male of a species Jason couldn't readily identify, handed the rod back and told them he'd ask around if there was any interest. They thanked him and gave him the com codes where they could be reached. Not in any hurry to get back to the ship, the three found a tavern within walking distance and decided to stop in for a drink. "So, what do you think?" Jason asked his friends.

  "About what?" Crusher answered with a question as he sipped from a bottle of ale. Jason just rolled his eyes and looked to Lucky.

  "I cannot give definite odds on how successful we will be with this gambit, Captain," the synth said. "If the trader does as we hope and finds out that the rods are indeed stolen, and worth a lot of money, his greed may override his caution and it could be the first step we need."

  "Yeah," Jason said, frowning, "there are a lot of 'ifs' with this plan. More than I would normally like. But these guys are too smart for us to just stumble onto. If we're going to make inroads the first move will have to come from them." They sat in silence over another drink while they pondered their next move. Many of the locals were giving the new comers some not-so-friendly stares, but nobody was foolish enough (or yet drunk enough) to walk over and challenge the menacing looking trio. Right as he was about to suggest they leave, Jason's com unit beeped with an incoming message. "That didn't take long. He wants to meet again, this time to check the rest of the cargo." He replied telling the "merchant" to meet at the ship in one hour. Crusher expressed concern at this.

  "Do you think it wise to have them meet us at the ship?" He asked.

  "Honestly, can you think of a more easily defended position? If they're up to something, I'd rather have the Phoenix's defensive systems backing me up than trying to flee with a bunch of heavy cargo crates," Jason answered. Crusher conceded the point with a nod and a shrug and rose to leave.

  "Let's get out of here before one of these idiots does something they'll regret," he said loudly, looking at the bar patrons meaningfully. Almost all of them quickly averted their gaze, refusing to meet his intense stare. The three left the bar without incident and flagged down another ground vehicle for hire to take them back to the spaceport. Jason was apprehensive about this part of his plan; if it didn't bear fruit he would have just given away the one bargaining chip he had in the stolen weapons parts.

  Felexx's host planet was moving across the sky as they reached the terminal and began their walk back to where the Phoenix was parked, casting everything in a gloomy light. When they reached the ship and dropped the ramp, they saw that the others had already gotten the cargo straps removed and had slid the crates back closer to the rear doors. Jason was also pleased to see that one of his crewmembers had the foresight to activate the more formidable ground defenses they rarely used, as evident by the pair of articulated plasma cannons that were flanking either side of the cargo bay entrance. The stunners that were located throughout the ship were good, but if someone was wearing armor or a personal shielding device, they'd be next to useless. The rear-facing guns were also powerful enough to deal with any ground vehicles that may prove problematic.

  It was almost an hour to the second when four figures approached the rear of the ship, hands clearly visible although two were obviously armed. Crusher and Lucky stood on either side of the ramp where they could cover the entrance and also be covered by the ship's cannons, the former in full body armor. Jason was standing right at the foot of the ramp as they approached and held up a hand when they were within earshot. "That's close enough," he yelled across the distance. "Only two of you need to come any closer. Your armed escort is free to watch from there." After a brief conversation amongst themselves, the trader Jason had met earlier and one other approached.

  "Mr. Smith," the trader said, addressing Jason by the fake name he had given. "It seems you're in luck. I was able to find a buyer for your merchandise, but not nearly at the price you were asking."

  "Well that is unfortunate, Mr. Black," Jason said, using the obviously fake name the other had given as well. "How much less are we talking?"

  "Half."

  "Have a good evening gentlemen," Jason said, turning his back. "Come on guys, pack it up."

  "Hold on!" Mr. Black shouted. "Aren't you willing to negotiate?"

  "I am," Jason said. "But not from a position of being offered half my asking price. That tells me you don't take us seriously... I find that insulting." The trader gave Lucky and Crusher a nervous look and continued.

  "You have to understand, Mr. Smith, those items are marked. Trying to find a buyer willing to overlook that wasn't easy," he said. "Maybe there's some room for a trade to sweeten the deal?"

  "I'm listening," Jason said, turning back to fully face him.

  "I can offer you up to seventy-five percent of what you want, in exchange for a small service from you; a simple transporting job," Mr. Black said.

  "How simple?"

  "Twenty crates delivered discreetly to another spaceport further into the Cluster. Nothing dangerous loaded in them, just something that a contact of mine would greatly appreciate having moved." This was along the lines of what Jason was hoping for; a smuggling job in exchange for the rods he had in his cargo bay would put them in just a little deeper and that much closer to what they were after. He kept his face blank and pretended to think it over.

  "Eighty percent of asking price and you have a deal," he said after a few moments.

  "Let me confer with my client and I'll let you know," Mr. Black walked away towards his other two men who were waiting and pulled out a personal com unit. Jason didn't think this was anything more than a stalling tactic, but it did make him nervous; from what he'd learned there was very little in the way of law enforcement on Felexx, but he didn't want to be the unlucky sap that walked right into a sting operation meant to snag the small time smugglers that infested the settlements on the moon.

  "He wasn't happy, but he agrees," Mr. Black said. "But, your deadline is tight... I hope your ship is fast."

  "Fast enough, I'm sure," Jason said. "If the deadline is tight, I'd suggest we get moving on trading out cargo and, of course, our pay."

  "Tomorrow morning," Black said. "It will take some hours to get the shipment packaged and ready. We'll be here at planet-rise."

  "Looking forward to it," Jason replied, turning his back on the four and walking back up the ramp into his ship.

  Chapter 7

  The crew of the Phoenix was up and about well before a heavy wheeled vehicle lumbered across the tarmac and came to a halt near the rear cargo ramp. Black and two others hopped out of the front and waved to Jason and Lucky, who were standing at the top of the ramp. Jason nodded and indicated to Crusher and Twingo to start unloading the crates they had been carrying even as Black's two cohorts began unloading twenty smaller containers from their vehicle. The trader was acting even more nervous than he had yesterday, and that made Jason nervous in turn.

  It took an additional thirty minutes to completely swap cargo and for Jason to accept payment for the weapon frequency rods. Black looked like he wanted to leave as quickly as possible, "We're all square here. Look, I don't know you, and I don't care to... but a word of advice: do not try to tamper with the containers, or swap them out, or do any of the other little tricks you smugglers like to pull. I also can't stress enough that you be on time for your drop off." He handed Jason a data card, "The coordinates are on here. It's not a prepared field so don't be concerned that you're not landing at a proper port." That made Jason even more nervous than he already was.

  "Even if the cargo isn't dangerous, your client might be," he said. "I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the idea of landing my ship in a place with no security."

  "I can promise you my client could care less what thrills you and what doesn't," Black hissed. "Just do what you agreed to do, and you'll be on your way. He'll have no interest in anything else you have." Jason shrugged and turned to walk away. Mr. Black, relieved to be done with the conversation, practically ran to his vehicle and wasted no time spee
ding away. As he did, Jason also broke into a run as he moved through the cargo bay, pausing to close up the ramp and pressure doors. Something was wrong, he could feel it.

  "Kage!" he called into the intercom, "Get us ready for flight, now!" As he ran onto the bridge his fears proved to be founded.

  "We have four small ground vehicles speeding towards us," Kage said as the main drive was coming up. "It's not likely they're heading for some other ship."

  "How long until we..." Jason's sentence was cut off as a blast rocked the Phoenix. "Holy shit! These guys are loaded for bear!" Jason jumped into his seat and began feeding power to the main drive even as the reactor was coming up to power. The gunship lifted smoothly off the tarmac and Jason pulled it into a tight turn to bring them about and start putting distance between them and the ground assault. Two more blasts reverberated through the ship and a flashing warming lit up on Jason's display.

  "They just took out one of the inertial stabilizers," Kage said tensely. "Bringing the shields up." Three more rapid blasts hit them, but all they felt was a mild buffeting as they hit the shields harmlessly. By then they were accelerating up and away from the spaceport and were quickly out of range.

  "Keep your eyes on the sensors," Jason said. "I don't want to find out they have air support the hard way by taking any more shots."

  "Got it. What the hell were they carrying on those ground cars? That first shot burned a hole right through the forward emitter baffles," Kage said. Jason cringed at the news. Twingo won't be happy about that.

  "I don't know what they had, but they knew who we were, what we were carrying, and when we'd be picking it up," Jason replies. "That was no coincidence, our shady trader was trying to get out of there as fast as he could."

  "Yeah... here we go again, huh?" Kage said with a nervous smile. "We'll be in orbit in three minutes. Slip-drive is ready when you are."

  "Very good," Jason answered. "Go ahead and find out where we're going," he said as he handed Kage the data card, "and plot us a jump out of here."

  Once they had a jump point, Jason wasted no time in getting them out of the system. Felexx may have been lawless, or at least very close to it, but he had no doubt that the little exchange at the spaceport would be noticed by someone. It was only when they were in slip-space and on their way to the drop off did Jason call Twingo on the intercom and check in. Oddly enough, instead of the usual huff, or full-on assault of profanity, Twingo simply informed him that repairs to the damaged stabilizer were already underway and that it would be operational again within the hour. The rest of the damage was superficial so he didn't worry about it.

  His next task was to get Lucky and Crusher to scan their cargo and make sure it was safe; or at least safe as far as they could tell. The cargo bay was fairly secure, but it did sit above and between the nacelles that housed their main engines; a well placed bomb could seriously ruin their trip. With the crew going about their own tasks, Jason accessed the data card he had given Kage from his own terminal. Along with detailed jump exit points, orbital entry vectors, and landing coordinates, the card contained very specific information on how they were to make contact once they meshed in-system. It was a clever method of embedding a burst transmission within their transponder's normal "pinging." Only someone who was aware of the specific harmonic the burst was carried on would be able to clearly intercept it and even then, they would need the proper encryption algorithm to decode the signal. To everyone else it would appear as a miniscule burp of static on the carrier frequency.

  They had set a velocity that was eighty percent of what a comparable-sized micro freighter would be able to achieve, so it would put them at their destination in a little over thirty-six hours as well as giving the Diligent some time to catch up. Or at least catch up as far as Felexx. Jason had instituted a policy of com silence now that they were digging deeper into the criminal underbelly of the Concordian Cluster. He had no idea who may be monitoring their transmissions and he was taking no chances by sending, or receiving, anything that could blow their cover. With nothing else pressing to do, Jason went to grab a meal, shower, and some rack time. He made an announcement to the rest of the crew to do the same when they could.

  "Meshing in-system in twenty seconds," Kage said. Jason just nodded. Everyone was well rested, the ship had been repaired during the flight, and they were ready to meet whatever came next head-on. Their destination, the planet Oorch Prime (pronounced Ork), was one of the ubiquitous small rocky worlds orbiting a medium sized star that seemed to be innumerable in that part of the galaxy. Not all supported life, but Jason was shocked to find out how many did; it was far more than he would have ever guessed. He was also surprised, and disappointed, at the rather mundane appearance of most of the species he had encountered. It seemed life wanted to evolve around a few specific paths, most were bipedal, mostly hairless bodies, and featuring a comforting bilateral symmetry. Doc, a geneticist by trade, had tried to explain why this was, but the lecture had just confused Jason even more. Suffice it to say, Jason Burke, homo sapien, had little trouble fitting into this world. There were the more exotic beings like Crusher and Kage, but for the most part he walked freely among the space-faring cultures with hardly a second look.

  The Phoenix burst into the Oorch system and turned onto a course that would lead them to Oorch Prime, the forth planet out from the primary star. "Start squawking," Jason told Kage, indicating he should begin the embed signal that would alert their contact they would be arriving soon. Oorch was like most of the habitable planets in the Concordian Cluster; it didn't have an advanced, indigenous species, so almost all civilization was from the colonization boom that happened a few hundred years in the past. This normally left for sparsely populated planets, at least by most standards, so there weren't a lot of strict regulations controlling entry and exit of ships. A traffic control computer checked the transponder code the Phoenix was broadcasting, verified there were no open law enforcement actions tied to it, and simply logged it. The only time a pilot would talk to an automated system or live controller was if they planned to approach one of the four large cities that dotted the planet.

  Since Omega Force had no intention of landing near a city, they proceeded to slip into an equatorial orbit and began to slow their velocity to smoothly enter the upper atmosphere without a word to the ground controllers. Jason remembered Twingo's admonishment about slamming into the mesosphere at high velocity, so he pulled back even more and let the gravimetric drive work its magic as the Phoenix descended in a smooth, controlled arc towards a largely unpopulated area.

  Their landing site was literally in the middle of nowhere; a field with tall grass that wasn't within detection range of any sizable community. As Jason walked out of the armory into the cargo bay, having donned his body armor and grabbed his weaponry, he saw that Crusher had grown inpatient and had already opened up the ship. He debated calling up to the bridge and telling Kage to launch the twins, but decided he would keep a low profile for the time being. When he walked down the ramp he could see Lucky and Crusher taking up watch positions on either side of the ship and could also see Twingo's lower half sticking out of an access panel near the number four main engine to make certain the damaged stabilizer was back to full operational condition. There was an alert tenseness that everyone shared, but only Jason, Lucky, and Crusher seemed to enjoy it. They stood silently as they awaited their contact.

  It was nearly two full hours later before Kage called over the com and informed them they had an aircraft closing on their position. The strain of remaining on high-alert for so long had tightened the muscles in Jason's neck, so he was glad for something to be happening. Soon they could hear a far away, high pitched whine of an atmospheric engine as the aircraft grew closer. "There," Crusher said, pointing to the northeast. Jason turned and let his enhanced eyes focus farther away until he could just make out a moving speck against the clear sky.

  "Ok, guys," he said. "Let's be alert."

  "I am always alert, Captai
n," Lucky said without a trace of humor. Crusher turned to his friend and cocked one eyebrow, but said nothing; Lucky's penchant for stating the obvious annoyed the big warrior to no end.

  It took the aircraft another fifteen minutes to traverse the distance and circle the gunship in a slow, wide loop. Jason could see the four engines (two in front, two in the rear) angle downwards and the craft settled into a low hover before lowering its landing gear and touching down. The engines weren't the typical turbines that were found on most atmospheric vehicles. Instead, they seemed to employ some sort of ionic airflow system in which electrostatic fields accelerated air through the motor at high velocity and created thrust. While not as powerful as jet turbines, they were significantly quieter and cleaner.

  As soon as the aircraft touched down, a ramp dropped down in the rear and eight beings, all concealed head to toe in black clothing, disembarked with four hover sleds and made their way towards the Phoenix. The black-clad person in the lead stopped in front of Jason as the rest of his crew went up the gunship's ramp without pausing. Jason gestured for Crusher and Lucky to stand down and turned to face alien in front of him. "You didn't tamper with the containers in any way?" it asked in a distinctly masculine voice.