The Space Mavericks

by Michael Kring

  “How very kind of you,” I said sarcastically.

  He sat down on the couch. I turned my chair to face him. I wanted to see that weapon. There wasn’t much of a chance that I could take it from him. He would more than likely be very fast, and I could only be faster if I activated. If I did that, however, he would more than likely kill me in the split second it took to activate. I couldn’t spare that moment of vertigo.

  “Nicos is resting?” he asked, indicating the closed door of the bedroom with a slight nod of his head.

  “She was fairly upset,” I explained. “The street affair, you know.”

  His face momentarily darkened. “That was not our choice. It was the act of an underling who exceeded his authority,” he said. He then smiled at me, and I was reminded of a snake’s smile. “But I’m sure you don’t believe me.”

  “You’ve got the disrupter,” I said. “I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

  He identified himself. “Central Security Agent, First Class, Jeften.” He showed me his gold-alloy badge. I was impressed.

  I decided the best tactic would be to throw in a few complaints. “What’s with you people, anyway?” I asked. “You could have had Renate on Firelight if you’d just let me walk out of that station without trying to bean me.”

  “That was not our doing,” he said through clenched teeth. I could tell I had touched a very sore nerve. “It was a series of unfortunate incidents.”

  “Was that gang also following your orders?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “I must thank you for saving her life. We don’t want her dead, you understand. We merely want to use her as a lever against her father.”

  “What has her father done to Central?” I asked.

  “He has one of the few laboratories, outside of Shadow, that can produce FUNN,” he explained. I whistled. That made her father even wealthier than I had thought.

  “Blackmail?” I asked. Jeften nodded. “Were you going to ask for a cut of his profits, or try to put him out of business?”

  “We have nothing against his continuing his operation,” Jeften said, relaxing back on the cushions of the couch. He still held the disrupter steady in his right hand. I didn’t even think about moving.

  “That’s very nice of you, I’m sure,” I said, relaxing back in my chair. “What’s become of Kohn?” I asked.

  “He is being detained in a local prison for being one of the two insane people who caused a lot of damage near the Strip,” he said with a wicked smile creasing his thin lips. He changed subjects and began to brag. “It was very obtuse of you to register in a comp hotel. As soon as we knew you were headed toward Steel, we programmed all comps to alert us when any of your trio checked into one.”

  “How utterly brilliant of you,” I said. He jerked a little, and I could tell my little sarcastic remark had slipped past his ego and touched something.

  “Fripp, I can’t get in touch with my . . .” Renate began as she came out the bedroom. She stopped as soon as she saw Jeften.

  He looked over at her, startled. I took my chance. I activated, and then then jumped toward him. He was fast. He managed to get his arm moving as I slammed down with the side of my right hand against his wrist. The disrupter went off and a beam of violet light flowed out from the barrel and caressed the floor in front of the couch. Instantly, the forces holding the atoms of the material were disrupted, and with a slight whoof of sound, the floor was gone.

  He activated. I should have expected that. He didn’t have fangs, but he did have claws that looked slightly blue. I gathered his alteration had been undertaken since mine. He didn’t look that old. He swung his hands at me, trying to force me to fall through the hole in the floor. I could hear voices down below as the people who had been in the room ran screaming out of it. They had a large hole in their “roof.” I jumped back over the hole.

  “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “You’re good. You’re not good enough.”

  It was the first time in my life I faced another modified individual. The Reegans do so few of the operations, I had thought that perhaps I would never have to face one.

  He leapt over the hole in the floor. As he got near, I grabbed his left forearm. He swiped at my head with his right hand, but I jerked my face back. I shifted my weight, and threw him as hard as I could against the far wall. He twisted in his flight and landed feet first against the wall. He absorbed the impact with his thigh muscles, and then leapt back at me. I was getting tired of all this aerial gymnastics, so I jumped backward and was out of his way. He twisted again and landed on the couch, bounced from it, and then back at me. He landed a foot in front of me. I smashed down on the floor with my right heel and threw myself forward. I twisted and tried to ram him in the stomach with my right shoulder. He saw me coming and slashed my back as he gripped me and threw me toward the hole. I went through and down to the room below. I jerked my body around and landed on my feet.

  I looked up. He glanced down at me from the floor above. I launched myself at him, using all the strength in my legs. My left leg was still a little sore, but as he dodged my attack I kicked out at him. A flash of light spiked out and blinded me. I couldn’t see a thing as I landed, back down on the lower floor. I rubbed my eyes and blinked. I still couldn’t see. I felt a touch on my arm. It was a claw.

  “Don’t move,” he warned. “I’ve got you.”

  “I’m blind,” I said. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “What?”

  “I told you I can’t see . . .” and as I said that, talking in a lisp around my fangs, my vision cleared. It was skewed somehow. I saw odd colors, and when I glanced at his face, I gasped in open astonishment. His skin had a pale, greenish-yellow-orange glow to it. The color was so odd, so utterly bizarre, I was speechless.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “It looks like you can see me.”

  He had a hand on each of my shoulders. The claws were ready to slash me to shreds if I tried anything. But he could also tell I was staring at his face. The puzzlement in his oddly colored eyes was almost comical, but he held his face stern.

  “Let him go!” Renate screamed.

  We both looked up and I felt a shudder go through me. She was holding the disrupter and it was aimed in our direction.

  I deactivated. As I did so, all the strength left my body. I sagged in Jeften’s arms, and he let me collapse to the floor. He glanced up at her in a fantastically quick gesture and then leapt. She didn’t stand a chance. She was just beginning to squeeze the trigger when he took it from her. I shook my head as he landed beside me. My vision returned to normal. I also felt as weak as a kitten. There was no way I could even get to my feet.

  He deactivated. He smiled wickedly as he held the disrupter on me. “You won’t get away this time.”

  I wanted to kick him in the shins, but that would have gotten me a lot more trouble than I wanted. I relaxed. I was breathing very heavily, too. I glanced at my left leg, and noted it was bleeding again. The blood was oozing down my foot. Such wonderful things were happening on Steel.

  “What did you use to blind me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t blind you,” he said. “Your ring gave a funny green flash, and then you said you were blind.”

  “Damn ring!” I spat out. I could have defeated him, perhaps. It was anyone’s guess. But the ring had taken me out of the fight, and rather quickly, too. What sort of thing was it doing to me now? I lifted my hand to stare at the stone when it gave off another brilliant flash of light. White light.

  Jeften screeched and dropped the disrupter. “No! No!” he screamed. He held his face in his hands, and then he collapsed to the floor. I pulled myself along the floor toward him. I could tell he was unconscious, though his body was still shaking and quivering, as if he were having nightmares.

  I pulled his hands away from his face and he looked at me. I recoiled in shock. His eyes had turned black and his iris was yellow. His pupil was white. I had never seen anything like it. His body gav
e a convulsive jerk, and he closed his eyes. He went rigid, then relaxed.

  “Is he . . .?” Renate asked.

  I glanced up at her. She was in the same room as we were. She must have come down the stairs and into the room. I shrugged. “I don’t think so,” I answered.

  “What did you do to him?” she asked. Her voice was shrill, and I could catch a note of hysteria in it. “Well? What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

  “You must have done something to make him react like that. You’ve got poison in your claws. Right?”

  “No, I don’t,” I snapped at her. I pried open one of his eyelids, and his eyeball was still black. His eyes were rolled up in his head. I let the eyelid snap back and noted he was still breathing. He wasn’t dead. But something had happened to him. The ring had done it. I wondered how. I also wondered what it had done to me to make me blind.

  “Flashh,” I blurted. What?

  “What did you say'” she asked.

  “I... I don’t know,” I answered. The word was very odd, but it reminded me of the sounds I had heard on Green. And when I had uttered the word, I knew Jetsen was going to be all right. He was merely, temporarily, locked within his own mind, examining his past. He was being forced to see why he acted the way he did. I knew all that in a split second. I also knew my blindness had been done to prevent me from fighting any longer. My body was on its last reserves.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Renate suggested.

  “Agreed,” I said. “He’s bound to have a partner. I wonder where he could be?”

  “You don’t have to worry,” a voice called from the door.

  I looked and saw three men standing there, needle-laze pistols in their hands. They were all colorless, and wore identical beige tunics, loose fitting beige pants, and brown boots. I struggled to my feet, leaving Jeften’s disrupter on the floor where it had fallen.

  “What do you mean?” Renate asked. She frowned, and then looked back at Jeften. “I’ve seen him somewhere . . .”

  “His partner has already been taken care of,” the man in the middle of the trio said.

  “I know!” Renate called out. She pointed a finger at Jeften. “he’s one of the men who kidnapped me!”

  “Bring him along, Virzi,” the man in the middle said to the man on his left.

  “Why?” Virzi asked.

  “If she says he’s one of the goons who snatched her, then DeMann is going to want to find out all about this mess!” the man in the middle snapped. “Now, get him!”

  “Okay, Misth,” Virzi said to the obvious leader of the group.

  “How’d you find us?” I asked.

  “Two can tap into a comp network,” Misth said.

  “You know Daddy?” Renate asked.

  “We work for him,” Misth said with a smile.

  11

  I relaxed a little.

  Without saying too much else, they led us outside. The streets were oddly deserted, and I wondered where Jeften’s partner had been placed. Virzi and the other man, whose name was finally revealed to be Walim, dragged Jeften along between them. They weren’t too gentle with him.

  The Vehicle they placed us in was huge. I sat in the back seat with Jeften and Virzi, who held a needle-laze at both of us, though Jeften was still out it. Every now and then he’d whimper, or make motions with his hands as if trying to force something away he didn’t like. I wondered what he was discovering about himself in Fla’shh.

  Renate hadn’t told them that I had just saved her from Jeften, and they treated me with without any courtesy at all. I wondered about her attitude, and I hoped she would at least tell her father that I wasn’t one of those goons that Jeften hung around with. I thought she would. She just didn’t want to associate with me.

  The ride was smooth and long. I still felt very weak. I knew Misth was the leader of the group, and from his name, I assumed him to be a member of the D’ler sect. It’s an old religion, but its precepts are a bit much for me to swallow easily: the son of god is walking throughout the universe, and whosoever finds and announces him, the end of anger, war, and all evil, will be at hand. There had been quite a number of false announcements over the centuries, but it’s all considered a part of the way god had planned it. Each to his own.

  Misth was driving us along at a rather high speed, and the scenery whizzed past. I couldn’t get much of an impression of the countryside, but it was green. Steel, or at least this section of it, was wet. There were fewer and fewer homes, and finally, all I could see were grates and trees and lots of soft grass. I liked the effect it had on me, and it lulled my mind for the time being. I didn’t see any animals.

  About an hour later, we came to a huge gate and we swung toward it. The guards there were armed to the teeth, and I counted at least six guards that I could see. I wondered how many there were that I couldn’t see. A pointless question, really. DeMann was obviously very important, or paranoid, or both, but he was, without a doubt, filthy rich. After checking all of us over, and making sounds of delight at the sight of Renate, they let us through. The road was winding, and we made our way through groves of trees and past lush gardens.

  The flowers were all in bloom, and each time we passed a garden, there was just an explosion of color attacking the eye. Reds, greens, yellows, whites, and other colors, topped plants with huge rose-like petals and slender stalks that vibrated with the soft wind. At least DeMann’s gardener was good. I like gardens. I see so little green and growing things. It’s a nice change.

  We rounded a soft curve in the road, then the house came into view. It wasn’t that large, but it was opulent. It was a cream-colored dome, gilt with gold in intricate, geometric designs. At each point of the compass were white globes that were laced with turquoise triangles. It was breathtaking.

  The globes on top of the spires seemed to revolve, and their beauty faded as I realized what they were. They were comps that scanned the heavens to make sure no one was coming down in his territory. Somewhere around the grounds, amidst lush grasses and camouflaged by gorgeous flowers, were laze cannons and disrupter shield generators. At least he had enough taste to hide them. I wondered if Renate knew?

  Misth led us into the dome. Jeften was still out of it, and was carried between Virzi and Walim. The hall was arched and paneled in deep oak, with paintings every ten feet or so. Each of the paintings were expertly lit, and I could tell by their colors and subject matter, the paintings came from the Golden Age of Terra, and were worth more than the cargo in the Kraftwerk. Each. That shook me up. I had realized DeMann was wealthy, but I hadn’t gotten a grasp on how wealthy. With the concept that each painting was worth our entire load of Medicals, I finally understood. I wondered if he would have me killed before Renate could explain things.

  Jeften and I were led into a monstrously huge library and told to sit on the chairs. The chairs were made of some sort of animal hide, and were as soft as anything I’d ever felt. The walls of the library were lined with row after row of film in little cases. I asked Virzi, who still was guarding us, if I could walk about and look at the walls. Since Jeften was still out, he said I could, but if Jeften awakened, I’d have to be seated. It seemed a reasonable enough order, so I got out of my chair and wandered.

  Most of the books were in languages that I couldn’t even recognize. There were a few in old Terran, and even several in Reegan. I can recognize those, even though I can’t read them. I was suitably impressed, even though I had the feeling that DeMann might not read all those books, but just had them on the shelves to impress people like me. I came across the GalSpeech section, and noted all the titles were classics. There was even a section that was devoted to the sciences, even several high-level books devoted to Warp. At least he had a well-stocked library.

  As I walked around the library, pausing to look at ancient maps, I had the feeling I would never see Renate again. I was certain the murder I had committed was so shocking to her world view of things that s
he couldn’t really forgive me. I felt a little sad at that thought, and walked along the plushly carpeted floor with my head down for a few seconds.

  Virzi must have heard something, so he ordered me back to the chair next to Jeften. I noted as I sat down that there was one chair facing ours, and I assumed that was where DeMann would sit. I didn’t have long to wait. Misth and Walim came into the i

  library, opening the huge oaken doors for DeMann.

  I was slightly disappointed. He wasn’t a fat pig of a man with a cold, steel-blue eyes. He was tall, lanky, and had jet black hair. He wore a light green tunic and silvery-gray pants. His boots were soft leather, and I guessed they were specially hand-tooled; to fit his feet only. He had two pockets in his tunic, and they each bulged with something. I didn’t bother to speculate on what. I merely waited as he sat down, glaring at me and at the stirring form of Jeften.

  DeMann waited, seeing if Jeften would revive. Jeften let out a deep groan, and began to sit up. He covered his face with his hands, sucked in several deep lungfuls of air, and then dropped his hands. He shook his head and looked around. He seemed genuinely puzzled about where he was, and when he looked at DeMann, he was obviously shocked.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jeften muttered. “So sorry. I ... I didn’t know.”

  I was puzzled about what Jeften was muttering, but DeMann knew. DeMann leaned forward in his chair and glared at Jeften.

  “If your comps were as intelligent as they were supposed to be,” DeMann growled in a surprisingly deep voice, “you would have known.”

  “How could we have known?” Jeften asked, staring straight into DeMann’s eyes. “There’s no way we could have known.”

  “Your geneticists had enough opportunities to examine her,” DeMann snapped. He patted his arm of his chair as he looked at one of the maps on the wall behind us. He glanced back at Jeften. “You’ll pay for your mistake,” DeMann said softly, but the menace in his voice made chills go up my spine. “I still can’t believe you made it.”