by Tom Shepherd
“Holy snakes,” he laughed. The serpent had resumed its duty station on the jump seat behind the pilot modules, where it curled up and went to sleep. Tyler smiled, still uncertain what to do about his new passenger.
He turned to the task at hand, slow approach to the event horizon at TCG 4893. A few more hops put the Sioux City in range of Terran Gate 2. Then a two-hour shuttle flight and he was back in Kansas City for a nice nap before Sunday brunch. He yawned. Long day, but rest awaits the triumphant hero, home with wild game bagged on his new world. Well, not bagged, literally. It slithered aboard and surrendered.
Suzie dropped from swirling lights to black space. Locator scans found the dark Jump Gate five hundred kilometers away. He began a slow, steady approach and covered about half the distance when a star cruiser, red with discordant blue stripes, appeared thirty-two kilometers off starboard.
“You gotta be kidding me.” Tyler punched max thrust and went into evasive maneuvers, intent on getting just close enough to the Gate to brake and glide through before the ancient security system blasted him to stardust. The Rek Kett warship pursued, powered its weapons, and pummeled Suzie’s dwindling shields. He was ready to execute rapid deceleration when a stray blast from a laser cannon tore through the weakest point in his aft shield envelope and slammed into the Sioux City. The lucky shot demolished flight controls and sent him spinning wildly toward hard, black metal ahead.
His sensors went dark. Thanks, you alien piece of shit Gate. “Suzie, I need help!”
The computer whistled and beeped at him like a breathless cheerleader yelling, “Go, team, go!” so hard it crashed her ability to control the scream.
The tiny scout ship tumbled toward an immovable object. It was over now. If the Rek Kett didn’t get him, smashing into the impregnable surface or triggering the automatic defenses of the Jump Gate will crush him like a bug. Cosmic Karma for the wounded insect he’d killed on Tyler-4.
Tyler waited to die, yet again. This time it felt so familiar he almost welcomed death, a final end this miserable day. He closed his eyes as the curve of dark metal filled his viewports. And then a familiar voice cut through all channels, sharp and angry.
“Back away from my son’s ship, assholes, or I destroy you in place.”
Tyler blinked. “Mom?”
“Rek Kett vessel, this is Admiral Bianca Matthews. I will not warn you again.”
His viewports stopped whirling, and space around the Sioux City glowed with the hazy light of a tractor beam. He visually scanned for vessels and found three destroyers and a big cruiser, all deployed around the Jump Gate, all prominently emblazoned with the Matthews Interstellar Industries logo—capital M supported by two capital I pillars.
“Well, well, well.” Tyler chuckled. “Tag, you’re it, Dirt Bag.”
With hundreds of weapons trained on the Rek Kett ship, Senior Captain Zalaar-17 chose life over kamikaze for the Emperor. His ship pivoted abruptly and disappeared into hyperspace.
Tyler felt waves of relief wash over him. He had survived the worst day of his life.
Then his mother’s face appeared in the viewscreen, which tempted him to follow the Rek Kett. He swallowed hard and opened two-way video.
“Nice to see you, Mom. Just happen to be in the neighborhood?”
Bianca Victoria Matthews always intimidated people, but the dark eyes and stern expression of a fiery Latina could be downright overwhelming from the bridge of a starship. Dark blonde hair parted by a streak of silver to add a wizened effect. Long, sleek face with wide forehead, full lips and strong chin. It creeped him out a little to admit it, but family holograms showed a young Bianca, vivacious and supple and rather seductive, like a busty Spanish dancer with a rose in her teeth. At fifty-two and a few kilos heavier, she was no longer the lithe beauty who’d captured the steely heart of Tyler’s father. But she still pleased the eye, unless she was tongue-lashing crew members or firing company employees, or scowling at her three children.
Today, she matched her soulmate, T. Noah III, steel-for-steel. Bliss from the abyss. Their brawls were legendary at Matthews HQ, and Tyler often wondered why one of them hadn’t killed the other. His brother, J.B., thought it was sexual, but Tyler dismissed that idea. Not because it couldn’t be true, but because he found his parents love life excruciating to contemplate.
“Do you require medical assistance?” Her voice carried hints of Andalusia within the perfect Neo-Terran.
“No, ma’am, but I’ve had the worst day of my life.”
“En serio? This Gate region—”
“Unexplored. I checked.” Okay, bad move. Never interrupt with Admiral Mom already angry at you.
She stiffened. “This ‘unexplored’ Gate region straddles the Jayendra corridor, one of the most dangerous zones for pirate activity in known space. Don’t you check the Company Starflight Bulletins before one of your weekend jaunts to nowhere?”
Have you been talking to Suzie? He cleared his throat. “Actually, I’m a little behind in my technical reading.”
“I see you managed to get your scout ship shot to hell. How did you piss off those pendejos this time?”
“I didn’t do nothing!” Suddenly he was eleven years old again. “I found this Earth-class planet, okay? Uninhabited, fantastically beautiful, but packed with nasty life forms. But I got away, until the Rek Kett—”
“You landed?” Bianca touched a key. A hazy tunnel appeared around her image to indicate she had gone private with her son. “Tyler, what were you thinking?”
“Well, I discovered a new world. It looked…nice.” And that was another mistake. Leading with flagrant disregard of company protocols, was not a good defense strategy. Now Dad would know. Tyler reached to the jump seat behind him and snatched the sleeping serpent. “I got you a present.”
She sighed. “Where do I begin?”
“How did you find me?” He dropped the snake onto the deck, where it slithered under a nav panel. Tyler hoped the reptile didn’t screw up Suzie’s course-plotting hardware.
“Homing beacon, affixed to your vessel,” Bianca said. “Don’t ask where. It stays. And I am having Apexcom installed while the ship is being repaired.”
“Does that clunky system finally work?”
“We have a few prototypes in the field. The Overland Park, C.C, Wollongong, and now you.” She tapped on her console, no longer making eye contact. “Next time you get in trouble, you can call home from anywhere in the galaxy.”
“Thanks for your trust in my piloting abilities.”
“Umm-hmmm. Where did those abilities land you today, Mr. Pilot?”
Tyler raised both hands. “Circumstances conspired against me, Mom. I am completely innocent of any—”
“Argue that case in front of your father. He sent me to fetch you.”
He cleared his throat. “Can I get a pass on quality time with Dad today? I’m worn out.”
“Fourteen hours of Gate-hopping to Terra. You can rest on the way. Barry will meet you at the P.T. in the morning.”
He smiled slightly. “Caught in your dragnet. Did Rosalie get away?”
“Standby. We’ll bring your ship into a decon bay. It needs a deep scrub. I’m showing massive, space-hardy pathogens smeared on the hull. You didn’t follow protocols.”
“Do you want the snake? It smells really good, like tropical fruit. And I’m sure the onboard bug killer took care of any—”
She shut down the link and tractored the Sioux City aboard her flagship.
Great. Summoned to the tower to face the King. This weekend is still messing with me. Why would Tyler Noah Matthews III haul me and elder brother up to the P.T.? That never happened before. Maybe he’s dying and wants to divide his kingdom. Not possible. My asshole Father will outlive the stars. Maybe he’ll fire us. Wishful thinking. He’s probably got some mind-numbing legal drudgery designed as penance for my sins. But why punish J.B., too?
To think, a few hours ago I was sipping beer on a tropical beach…
For just a moment, he wished he could go back.
Three
The offices of the CEO of Matthews Interstellar Industries at Kansas City, Missouri, occupied the topmost floor of a building so tall the designers dubbed it Star-Scraper One. It rose two hundred seven stories above Grand Avenue Plaza and sank seventy-nine levels through the limestone and bedrock below. M-double-I corporate HQ housed the main administrative and operational activities of a trade empire that stretched from the Terran homeworld to the boundaries of explored space.
From childhood, Tyler hated his father’s Spartan yet palatial executive office suite, which employees nicknamed the P.T.—Penthouse at the Top. The only thing he liked about the place this morning was that his older brother, J.B., waited there for him, perched on a brown leather couch between two potted umbrella trees.
Jeremiah Berechiah Matthews pecked a datacom pad with the fierce concentration of an accountant balancing ledgers on deadline. Bianca Matthews called her eldest son Barry, which she insisted derived from his middle name, Berechiah. He preferred Jerry, from Jeremiah, but nobody called him that. In contrast to Tyler’s dark eyes, light blond shock and lanky frame, J.B. was medium height and powerfully built, with Dad’s dark hair and blue eyes.
But J.B.’s crop was prematurely thinning, and the navy blue of his eyes never caught anyone’s attention. He could bench press twice his weight and regularly crushed robo-dummies during martial arts training, but he refused to travel alone in the city.
Brilliant but desperately shy, he studied for the Cistercian priesthood but never adapted to the rigors of Trappist daily life or the pious intimacy of a monastery. So, he went to law school where, Tyler suspected, J.B. could be scholarly and reclusive and masturbate in his dorm room without fear of excommunication.
J.B.’s social skills were pathetic. Tyler thought he spent too much time alone. He played two antiquated instruments, the accordion and harpsichord, always privately. He hadn’t dated a woman since law school days, ten years ago. Although without any homosexual inclinations, he sometimes went to gay bars for company, but was never asked to dance.
J.B. suffered from Ursus Dormiens Syndrome, a genetic abnormality characterized by bouts of depression, which occasionally kept him curled up in bed for days. The sleep-stage coupled with occasional fits of rage gave the elder Matthews brother problems with a work schedule, but his supervisors allowed him to work from his apartment on difficult days.
When he was able to control the surging energy, J.B. sometimes rose to courtroom brilliance. It was a lifelong battle, lost too often. There was medication to treat the symptoms, but the condition was permanent. Tyler loved him fiercely.
“Hey, Big Brother.” Tyler bounced on the hard, expensive couch. “How was your weekend?”
He shrugged. “Not too bad.”
“I almost got eaten by a giant crab.” Tyler stretched out and put his feet on his brother’s lap. “Want to hear the story?”
“Not especially.”
“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
J.B. looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see. The Energy Consortium bought the government. Their new CEO is Roland Rooney.”
“Power grid is back in power, run by an Irishman. Who gives a fuck?”
J.B. tucked his datacom into a carrot-colored tote bag. “Well, Father could have problems with subsidiaries who balk at increased energy rates.”
“So, we bribe the politicians and keep doing business as usual.” Tyler yawned. Too early, no coffee. “I hate politics. Anything else?”
“How about murder in the Sagan system? Somebody killed the head of a crime family plus half the top ministers in the government.”
“Boring. Too far away to give a shit. That’s it?”
J.B. scratched his head. “Jump Gate Omega has apparently crashed and burned.”
Tyler jerked upright. “The Family Legacy Project blew up on The Old Man?”
“The Suryadivan government withdrew the right of easement. Declared the Alpha Gate contract null and void.”
“Dad must have gone supernova.”
“He snapped at Mother.”
“And lived to see another day?” Tyler shook his head. “Wonder what he’ll do.”
“He always says, ‘The highest good often comes from a multitude of little wrongs and rights crashing into each other until we figure it out.’”
“Let him figure it out,” Tyler snorted. “Never thought I’d say it, but today I’m glad we’re junior schmucks in the Patents and Contracts Division.”
“Maybe.” J.B. looked away.
Tyler raised an eyebrow. “Do you know something? Is the fiasco at the Rim related to why His Majesty summoned us?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, Ty.”
A Götterdämmerung in glorious profanity exploded inside Tyler’s head, but remained silent. J.B. would blame himself for the outburst.
Fortunately, before Tyler’s brain self-immolated, T. Noah Matthews III marched from the inner executive suites into the reception area. As usual, the imperial entrepreneur did not travel alone. An entourage of Executive V.P.s and senior advisors surrounded him, and a small army of technocrats tagged along the trailing edge of the swarm.
J.B. jumped to his feet and slung the garish computer tote over his shoulder. Tyler stretched full length on the couch, yawned, and closed his eyes. He knew what Dad looked like.
T. Noah was shorter than Tyler and thicker than J.B., but not from muscle mass. Everybody but Tyler’s mom called him The Old Man, but never to his face. Even in his sixties, Dad was ruggedly handsome, with short brown hair, warm blue eyes that could snap glacial in a nanosecond, and a withering glare that announced the food chain ends with me.
Corporate urban legends, confirmed in whispers by retired executives who knew him when, reported that in his youth he’d killed a trio of bandits who accosted a young damsel on a colony world. Although Noah was twelve years her senior, deep-rooted company gossip held that the timid beauty was so grateful to the gallant stranger she agreed to date him. Tyler calculated the timeline and had no doubt the alluring maiden was Noah’s wife and companion of thirty-three years. Although today she was no longer timid.
The horde swept past the two sons without a word. When footsteps disappeared into the turbo-lift, Tyler sat up.
“What happened?”
His brother handed Tyler a note. “Meet me at Sub-level 64. Now.” It wasn’t signed.
J.B. grasped the strap of his tote bag.
“You’re going to leap at his command?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Tyler said.
J.B. shrugged. “He controls the Trust Fund.”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Tyler sighed and pulled himself upright. His shoulder and chest muscles still ached from the close encounter with bad seafood.
“Why do you resist everything he wants, Ty?”
“Because Dad always gets his way. When I was little and bedtime came, I’d argue for a few more minutes to play the simulator or watch holo-movies. Remember what he always said?”
“‘Do you want to walk, or be carried?’ He said the same thing to me when I was little,” J.B. said.
“Exactly.”
“What did you want him to say?”
Tyler shrugged. “How about, ‘Son, let’s play together awhile. Then I’ll read you a story.’”
“We work with the parents God sends us,” J.B. said. “Let’s get down to Level 64.”
“Lead on, O King Eternal…” Tyler offered a half-smile.
“Metaphorically, I’m not the king. Father is the king.”
“It’s an old Congregationalist hymn.”
“We’re Catholics. And legally speaking, we’re more like princes with a pecuniary liability and vested—”
“Shut up, Barry.”
Tyler and J.B. were unfamiliar with the protocols for accessing restricted areas in the underground depths of Corporate HQ, so they ran afoul of a few security checkpoints below
Sub-level 35. Too much time passed, and Tyler knew his father would think they were avoiding him. Good. Let him wait for me this time.
* * * *
Inside the ultra-security zone at Sub-level 64, the staff watched T.N. Matthews III stroll the periphery of the cavernous storage bay, datacom pad in hand. Chief Financial Officer Lulu Treymore—late-thirties, modestly attractive, fashion model thin; long, Scandinavian face atop a slender neck surmounted by flat, platinum hair; exuding coconut perfume from every pore—gingerly approached the boss. He waved her off, and pretended to be absorbed in dictating memos and answering requests from senior executives across his far-flung M-double-I business empire, relayed by military grade, encrypted transmissions. In reality he absent-mindedly approved and rejected requests from subordinates light-years away as he studied the lone item before him on the storage deck.
Thick and wide, long as a soccer field, the ring-shaped mechanism floated prone in the middle of the hangar and filled the subterranean warehouse within ten paces of the walls. No lights, no signs of activity, but the black metallic hoop contained unimaginable energy, currently powered down and locked in standby mode.
A warning buzzer at the lift indicated an approved visitor had descended through the security levels. Expecting his sons, he made no move to greet them. That soon proved an error in judgment. The door snapped open, and Bianca stormed into the hangar in a yellow Matthews Company jumpsuit. The battle-seasoned huddle of advisors and executives parted like the Red Sea before her.
“Dismiss your toadies before I hurt somebody.”
Her husband offered a half-smile. “Should I keep at least one admissible witness?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Noah.”
He nodded, and the entourage melted into the nearest exit lifts. “So, you read my memo.”
