Windjammer: The Tradership Saga Book 1

by M J Gauntlet

  Ejecting the cube, Zax put it carefully away in a side flap of his bag. Turning back to the desk, he keyed in a request for the arrival and departure schedule for a ship called the Rapture. After a few moments, the information flowed onto the screen. Zax read the words, stunned.

  “The Rapture is due to make planetfall at the main spaceport of the planet Plato in the Greco star system, in eight weeks. While in Plato it is due to offload a cargo of spice lumber, frozen animal embryos, exotic chemicals (see appendix A) and medical supplies (see appendix B). Ship is due to liftoff on Tweenday 27th at 19:00 s.s.r. Bright planetary time, next port of call… the planet Calypso, in the Cairo planetary system. Those wishing to secure cargo space, please contact Wangi Shipping and Clearing House, 09919- 9099.”

  Sitting back in the chair, Zax began thinking furiously. According to The Rapture’s announced arrival and departure schedule for Plato, he had just sixty planetside days to settle his affairs on Bright and find a berth on an inter-system ship headed for Plato. Once there, he had to rendezvous with the Rapture, meet her captain and then somehow convince Captain Ito to take him on as crew! Plus, he had to do all of this while avoiding the Bright planetary police, the ISB and some unknown Marcosian agent. All of whom wanted to capture or possibly kill him! “Well,” he said out loud, “‘A journey of a thousand parsecs…’, but not on an empty stomach.”

  Zax rose from the desk and walked over to the room’s small table with the intention of taking his tray from the former night down to the main floor. Hoping that Ava might be able to provide him with a small bite to eat, he was surprised to find that the tray was no longer on the small table. Opening the door, discovered that the previous evening’s tray had been replaced by a new one sitting atop a small wooden collapsible tray table. This new tray contained plates filled to overflowing with various breads, muffins and cakes, alongside a container of what smelled like hot kaffee. The woman was a witch, most definitely a Slavonian sorceress…Zax thought with a grin.

  Sitting down again at the small table, Zax sampled and tasted the variety of morsels before him. There was stone sap jelly from the Southern Hills, wild Bright wasp honey, round twisted pastries, along with slices of the wonderful bread from the previous night’s meal. All of it tasted fabulous! He felt like a pig as he stuffed various treats into his mouth, until his stomach eventually rebelled. After finally eating his fill, he set the tray aside, but this time he took out a twenty-unit chit and laid it on the tray besides the demolished breakfast. Barely able to get up, he moved over to the desk and began to reflect on his current circumstance as he sipped a steaming cup of spiced kaffee.

  Activating the built-in desk com unit, Zax searched the arrival and departure times for traderships heading out to Plato. While there were two mid liners headed to the planet, there was only one tradership bound for the Plato. The one of the mid liners, “The Valkyrie” was scheduled to depart the following day, along with the tradership, Windjammer. The other mid-liner, The Falcon was due to depart a week from today. Checking the fare of a one-way ticket to Plato for the mid-liners, Zax winched.

  Even taking a second-class ticket would cost him more than he had in chits and on his prepaid disc. A passenger ticket on the freighter was more reasonable, but it still would leave him with dangerously low funds. He could take a chance and attempt to clear his Imperial Bank credit line, but he was sure that his account had been flagged by the ISB. The moment he attempted to access the funds in his account, the ISB would not only know where he was, but where he was intending to go. There was one other way he knew of to get some extra eunits, but it was an option of last resort. Unfortunately, he was down to last resorts.

  As he was thinking, Zax had idly picked up the Rubik’s Cube thing and had begun to fiddle with it. It somehow seemed to relax him as he twisted and turned the various smaller curbs in to various color configurations. Then abruptly he stopped and quizzically looked down at the strange toy. Something was off. There was an odd feeling to the cube’s surface that he hadn’t noticed before. Due to the nature of his former occupation, he was able to feel the difference in the texture of the various smaller cubes. After years of tuning and cleaning the small intricate assembly of ion injectors, in the darkened interior of exhaust tubes, his fingers had become very sensitive to the most minute of changes on any given surface.

  Turning over the small toy in his hands, he lightly stroked each of the six surfaces. There…there it was again. Not only an irregularity, but there was a slight tingling at his fingertips. As he began twisting the tiles around, he found that the tingling sensation was stronger as he began matching the sides with the irregularity. Turn…twist…twist…turn…turn…twist…turn…It went on like this for several minutes when unexpectedly, each of the four sides were all one color…except that each side had one tiny tile on its upper left-hand corner that was different. Touching one of the oddly placed colored cubes produced a much stronger prickle, almost a shock. Finding that he could not touch all the mispositioned cubes simultaneously with one hand, he placed the Rubik Cube on the desk and grasped it in both hands with his fingers touching each of the eight misaligned squares. Two things happened concurrently: a searing pain shot through his arms causing him to shout out and reflexively drop the cube, but instead of falling to the floor, the cube just hovered there in front of his face. Zax could only stare in amazement as next…the toy spoke:

  To Zax’s amazement, the multisided cube appeared to explode, as the tiny cubes that made up the larger one, separated into a whirling mass of cubic shapes. Four of the miniature cubes shot out and away from the gyrating mass, then abruptly stopped and hovered, each at one of the four corners of the room. In unison, each one began to emit a thin blue tinged laser beam, which together created a scanning grid that horizontally and vertically blanketed the room. The grid of light covered every exposed centimeter, including bending around and into the open doored fresher. After the scan was finished, the four small cubes returned to the chaotic rotating mass of cubes hovering in front of Zax.

  “Secondary scan complete…subject is alone…”

  With that statement the spinning mass of cubes abruptly ceased moving then, unexpectedly, all the cubes dropped to the floor, revealing two still floating, somewhat larger objects that must have been at the center of the maelstrom. Peering at the floating objects in front of his face, Zax thought that one looked like a data cube, an older model perhaps, but an informational data cube, nonetheless. The other one was a completely featureless, polished sphere. Zax tentatively stretched out his hand beneath them and both objects dropped obediently into his outstretched fingers. Turning them over in his hands, he noticed that the sphere had an odd feel to it. Its surface was smooth and felt extremely slippery to the touch, yet there was no sign of oil, dust or any other substance adhering to its glossy surface.

  Placing the sphere on the surface of the desk, Zax turned his attention to the data cube. It looked to be a standard sized information storage cube, but there was one startling difference: its surface did not have the pyrotechnic, kaleidoscopic, multicolored exterior, he was used to seeing on current day data storage cubes. Instead, it had a dull, matte, black finish that seemed to reflect no light at all. Zax wondered how it could store data without a crystalline matrix surface. As he moved to place the cube in the desk’s cube reader, he accidently bumped the corner of the desk, slightly tilting the desk momentarily, frowning he observed something odd about the sphere. It had not rolled or moved a millimeter from where he had initially set it down. It remained in place as if it were glued to the surface.

  Reaching out, Zax picked up the sphere. It lifted from the desktop easy enough. Placing it back on a different spot of the desk’s surface, he tilted the edge of the writing table, but the sphere simply remained where he had placed it. Raising a single eyebrow, Zax decided that the sphere’s physics defying properties were a subject for another day.

  Reaching over the baffling sphere, he placed the data cube in the reader
and sat back. There was a long pause, the holographic Tri-D projector flashed a series of strange symbols. Zax was staring at a face he had half expected to see…his father. But this image was of a much younger man than the previous apparition he had seen at the bank vault.

  “Hail to whomever it is who has found this message. I am Ezekiel Grayson, serial number 1099345-G, space scout of her Highness, Empress Michele McGowan Carrie Cromwell the VI of the Second Imperium of the Unity of Worlds. It is my hope that this message cube and its partner sphere has been discovered by one of my progeny, whether it be my own or another offshoot of my line, and that they have the wisdom to understand both the immense knowledge it will lead you to, and the immense danger that knowledge could bring to not only yourself but to any civilization. This cube, when placed in the nav-computer of a slit space capable ship, contains the coordinates to locate my lost partner scout ship S.A.R.A.I. located somewhere on the outer most rim of the frontier worlds. Warning!... the data held in this cube is ‘read only’ and can NOT be stored in the nav-comp’s memory. When the cube is removed, the image will vanish until the cube is reinserted. When the cube is subsequently placed in the data reader of my scout ship’s control panel, only then will the cube generate a second map, along with the coordinates, to find the knowledge of which I speak. None but those with the correct DNA-nanite codes can gain access to this information. If any others attempt to gain access to this data cube, it will erase itself. If any but the right DNA coded individual attempts to board my scout ship, S.A.R.A.I. will self-destruct. I beseech you, guard this data cube with your life. I give you my blessings and my regrets for placing this burden on your life. May the peace of God be with you… Farewell”

  The projected image flickered once, then vanished. Zax was transfixed on the now empty space, in astonishment.

  What the hell have I gotten myself into? What the fuck is going on? Zax thought to himself. This must be what everyone around him was dying for.

  Pressing the release button, Zax plucked out the data cube from the desk’s receptacle, held it up and peered at it warily. “…guard this data cube with your life….” the ghostly image of his late father had said. Thinking of Lauria, his father, and even Alicia Wilkerson, Zax was once again struck by the realization of the value in lives this innocent cube represented. Well, it wasn’t gonna cost any more lives if Zaxxion Grayson had anything to say about it. Looking around at the quaint little room and thinking about the possibly psychic, yet sweet landlady Mrs. Pearl, he made up his mind. The sooner he went about the business of getting away from the innocent people around him and getting himself off-planet, the better it would be for him and everyone around him.

  Reaching into his shirt pocket, he withdrew the card with Rodger’s com number and pressed the thumb print sized square in its center. The card flickered for a moment, the word ‘available’ shone on its surface, then the text above the square changed to ‘press for immediate pickup’. Zax pressed the rectangular spot and the words changed again to ‘estimated arrival time’, as a timer began counting down the time to pick up. Seeing how soon Rodger was due to arrive at the boarding house, Zax quickly took an inventory of his meager possessions, decided to immediately gather them up and place them in the rucksack. Picking up the old data cube and the weird sphere, he placed them in his jacket pockets. Zax then went about the task of sweeping up the smaller cubes that had fallen and scattered around the floor. Slinging the pack over his shoulders, he headed for the door and stepped out into the small parlor.

  The rotund Mrs. Pearl was nowhere to be seen, but before Zax could search for her, Rodger’s card beeped in his pocket indicating his arrival. Feeling sorry that he missed the chance to say goodbye to her, he fished out two hundred-unit chits and looking around the room, he spied a circular table with inlaid tiles as its surface. Walking over to it, he placed the chits at its center and headed for the door.

  Just as he keyed the door, Ava seemed to magically appear at his side. Looking up at him, her eyes had a look of motherly concern. She motioned him to bend down, and when he did, she kissed him lightly on his cheek.

  “Be well young fella, may the two suns always shine upon your path,” she said, in her wonderfully melodious voice, holding out her palm tattooed hand. “Thank you for your payment, it was more than overly generous.” Yep, most definitely a witch! Instead of shaking her hand, Zax bent down and gave it a soft kiss on her wrinkled cheek.

  “You are most welcome, beautiful lady. I cannot tell you how much your hospitality has meant to me. ‘May all your futures be joyful ones.’” Now where in the world did that come from? He thought suddenly, but it seemed the right thing to say and the effect on Ava was immediately observable, as he saw her blush a brilliant scarlet. Without uttering another word, Ava turned and disappeared back into the boarding house. Another buzz from Rodger’s card reminded Zax that he had to hurry, so he abruptly turned and exited the house.

  M’Lak de Drayton sat back in his hover chair and lamented his current assignment. He hated to admit that unless his fortunes changed drastically over the next fifty-six hours, he was going to be replaced and sent back the Restitution Worlds in shame. M’Lak tried every data mining and tracking sequencer in his considerable arsenal of black web programs. He queried every one of his assets on Bright, but still his quarry eluded him. M’Lak was puzzled as to how an unexperienced and somewhat naive young boy, had been able to thwart his efforts at capture so thoroughly. The ruse the boy used with the tracer bugs had worked far too well! I should have known better. M’Lak thought bitterly. But once again he had been too overconfident and underestimated the boy’s cunning. With a heavy sigh, he leaned forward and began trolling the data stream, looking for the smallest hint of the boy’s whereabouts.

  While M’Lak was regretting his failure to capture Zaxxion Grayson, another government agent was just beginning to understand the importance of the youth. Halleck Hymes, the local Bright field agent of the Imperial Special Branch, sat reading a copy of a dispatch he had just decoded from the central office. It read as follows:

  Agent Halleck Hymes upon review of your report of the two Cree assassins reported in your sector and the nature of their supposed target, an Ezekiel Grayson, a full investigation was instigated which centered around the ex-imperial space scout. His last recorded brain scan revealed an anomaly that had previously gone undetected. Using recently developed technology, it was possible to partially reconstruct the true events that resulted in the loss of the A.I. assisted scout vessel and the subsequent premature release from service of its pilot, the Ezekiel Grayson. It is now believed that the pilot stumbled upon an important discovery of a device or technology belonging to the ancient and extinct race the X’haChe. It is believed that there exists a possible link to the missing scout ship and the whereabouts of X’haChe artifact. You are instructed to apprehend and detain Zaxxion Grayson as soon as possible. It has also been noted that it is possible that alien agents on Bright have shown interest in Zaxxion Grayson. It is imperative that any information about the X’haChe artifact be kept out of their hands. Under no circumstances is the importance of this mission become known to anyone outside of Special Branch. You are to go about this mission with the utmost circumspect and covert manner.

  Special Agent Hymes, pressed the self-destruct tab on the corner of the dispatch and swore violently as the thin fax disintegrated into thin air. He knew it! Hymes knew something was a little off with Zaxxion Grayson when he first saw him in the interrogation room back in the Littleton police station. To confirm his suspicions, Hymes sent the query up the line to central. Why did it take central so long to move its bloated ass? Now, he had to quickly undo some of the things he had inadvertently set in motion that might queer the mission.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Zax was relaxing in on the padded back seat of Rodger’s skycab, when the partition between the driver’s seat and the passenger area retracted down into the seatback. Swiveling the driver’s seat completely around, Ro
ger turned to face him. Zax’s eyes went wide in momentary alarm, until he noticed that the autopilot light on the dashboard was flashing.

  “Zax, I thought you might be interested in a news story released in the news faxes yesterday morning,” he said in a noncommittal tone, sliding a thin fax sheet into Zax’s hands.

  Quizzically, Zax looked at the taxi driver and then down at the sheet now in his hands. Responding to his touch, the sheet lit up with a muted glow. What Zax saw next chilled his blood to the bone, as the images on the sheet were set in motion.

  “This is the second noon news with Kathy Tomes and Ken Pitman, and here are today’s top stories:

  MURDER IN PLEXS 3RD WARD DISTRICT.

  Lauria Talbot, third assistant manager at the Imperial Bank of Plex was found murdered in her Seabreeze apartment complex early this morning. Employees at the bank became suspicious when she did not report to work this morning for an important meeting and contacted authorities. Upon arriving at Ms. Talbot’s residence, her clothed body was found on the landing leading to her apartment. It has been reported that she was killed by the discharge of a high particle weapon.

  The image of the two perky announcers was replaced by a series of computer renderings looking very similar to Zax’s visage.

  “Authorities are now searching for the whereabouts of a young man fitting the description listed under this image, who was seen in the company of Ms. Talbot the evening before. Neighbors also reported seeing him leaving the apartment in the early hours of the morning. It is yet to be determined as to whether Ms. Talbot was sexually assaulted. We have learned though sources involved in the case that DNA collected at the scene is what was used to generate the image being displayed. The police are not yet calling him a suspect. They are currently considering him ‘a person of interest’ and seek only to question him. If anyone has seen this individual, they are asked to contact the authorities immediately…On another related story, delegates from the 3rd ward are demanding that the police presence be stepped up in the district. Siting this last incident as a …”