A Check for a Billion
Page 1
A Check for a Billion
a novel
by Vasily Mahanenko
Galactogon
Book#3
Magic Dome Books
A Check for a Billion
Galactogon, Book # 3
Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2019
Cover Art © V. Manyukhin 2019
English translation copyright © Boris Smirnov 2019
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2019
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-7619-065-8
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the shop and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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Table of Contents:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Chapter One
The Precian cruise ship plowed placidly through the vast vacuum of space. The captain glanced at his console and turned back to the porthole. For the last five years, he had ferried tourists to the system’s asteroid belt and he still found himself mesmerized by the spectacular vista. His passengers’ security did not worry him: the Zatrathi fleet was on the other side of Galactogon, and the treacherous Qualians were blockaded in their home systems, posing no threat to his cruiser. They were deep in allied space, not a single enemy within a radius of twenty parsecs. Of course there was always the chance pirate raid. But even this was less likely than colliding with a stray asteroid. The pirates were weak, fragmented and lacked the resources to mount a raid this deep in Precian space. And if some minnow risked it, the cruise’s escort of a dozen destroyers would be sure to put him in his place.
“Captain, three asteroids straight ahead!”
The Precian glanced up at the bridge’s screens with displeasure. It was rare, of course, but this had happened before — the asteroids in the belt would sometimes collide with one another, ejecting debris from the belt. And sure enough — three tumbling cliffs were currently hurtling at his cruiser.
“Give me a detailed situation report!”
“Three asteroids with average diameter of fifty meters. Risk of collision with object number three is 98%. The remaining objects do not pose a threat. Trimming our course should avoid collision.”
The captain frowned — any abrupt change of course was not desirable. There were a number of Precian VIPs on board. Any discomfort due to the inertia involved might result in the captain’s own discomfort as he tumbled down his career ladder. He could easily end up the captain of some rusty transport on a sandy backwater.
“Maintain current course,” ordered the Precian after a brief pause. He could only hope that the danger would pass. “Destroy object number three. We will arrange a small show for our passengers.”
Three torpedoes shot out of the cruiser in the direction of the dangerous asteroid. Meanwhile, onboard the cruise liner, the ship’s intercom burst to life with the captain’s voice:
“Esteemed passengers! This is your captain speaking. I would like to draw your attention to your cabin’s screens. We are about to conduct a minor demonstration of the power of Precian weaponry!”
The asteroid flared into a little sun for a few seconds. A salvo from the cruiser’s beam cannons pulverized what remained. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the peace and tranquility of the important guests.
“Report!”
“Target terminated. The two remaining asteroids are projected to pass fifty meters to starboard. Shall we destroy them as well?”
“Leave them.”
The captain wiped the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. The obese Precian’s body did not handle the tension of the last few seconds well. He had begun to worry: Would the Precian VIPs enjoy his little bit of improvisation? Or would they resent his waste of torpedoes? What if, upon their return, he would be court-martialed for wasting ammunition instead of simply taking evasive action? Such were the new worries that lodged themselves in his mind.
“Bravo, captain!” One of the guests entered the bridge as if it were his living room. “I appreciate your ingenuity. A mesmerizing spectacle! I must say, we almost believed it to be real. To launch an asteroid at the cruiser to tickle our nerves, and then to destroy it in such a spectacular fashion! Bravo! Would you like a reward?”
“The asteroid emerged from the belt on its own, Sir Grandar.” The captain’s back wasn’t used to bending, but this was one of those instances when one had to overcome one’s sizeable belly and bow as deeply as one could. The emperor’s favorite was not the type of individual with whom one could even hint at a lack of respect.
“Do not hold me a fool! I am well versed in the gravitational fields at work within asteroid belts! These boulders could not have come flying out on their own. Someone helped them and it seems to me that you did it. Would you maybe have us believe that pirates were behind this?”
In the peace and quiet of his own head, the captain recited everything he thought about Grandar’s intellectual abilities; naturally, what came out of his mouth was something else entirely:
“Sir Gran
dar, there have never been pirates in this area.” And, just in case, the captain bowed once more as deeply as he could and looked up only when he’d reached the bottom. What the hell was this fop talking about? What pirates?!
* * *
“Maybe, this isn’t such a good idea?” I looked over at Eunice who was holding onto the space rock as tightly as she could. Her helmet’s visor concealed her face, but the biometric sensors indicated that her pulse had accelerated. Training and exercise is one thing, but a true raid where you come in riding in on an asteroid, tumbling through open space at a Precian cruiser — is quite another thing altogether. We had reached the most critical part of our operation — the one where we no longer had any control over what would happen next. Just hurtling on this asteroid, praying the Precians won’t waste a torpedo on an object that posed no threat to them. My wife had never done this kind of thing before and she was understandably nervous. Once the cruiser was ten seconds’ flight from us, the time had come for me to decide — go alone or go with Eunice. After all, a nervous pirate is a dead pirate.
“It’s a fine idea,” my wife reassured me with a note of stress in her voice. “I’m calm — I’m ready.”
“All right,” I nodded, accepting her decision. “Brainiac, what do you have?”
The rhino’s roar blared across my speakers, signifying that the boarding party was eager for battle and wasn’t just sitting idly by waiting to retire. Next came the snake’s lazy yawn and indistinct murmur. Despite her seeming boredom, the engineer was ready to start screening Warlock with shields at any second. The gunner rapped a paradiddle as usual, and only Brainiac deigned to reply intelligibly:
“Captain, the team is ready. We await your orders.”
“Let’s do it then!” I ordered. Crouching, we waited until the asteroid rotated around its axis. As the Precian cruiser rose on the gray horizon, I jumped as hard as I could. Eunice jumped behind me. The shot of adrenaline after the long wait blurred my vision but then settled into a mellow buzz. The time had come at last! At stake was a prize check with a one and nine zeros!
Far behind us, a vivid explosion bloomed deep inside the asteroid belt, spraying fine, colored dust in an iridescent sphere that deformed as it encountered the other asteroids. The Precians’ sensors would be sure to detect it, and I really hoped that aboard the cruiser, everyone’s attention would be directed that way. We had packed a lot of reagent on that asteroid and now as it encountering the debris and ice particles drifting in the belt, a large area of space exploded in a breathtaking riot of color. The vision was an impressive one for anyone uninitiated.
The hull of the cruiser approached faster than I expected and I hurriedly fired reverse thrust to slow down. This was another weakness in our plan, another point that was down to circumstances. If at least one Precian did his job and maintained close watch over the ship’s perimeter sensors — instead of gawking at the fireworks display — we were sure to be noticed. Eunice had been opposed to running this risk, but I had insisted. Aren’t we soldiers of fortune, or what? Plus, Galactogon had taught me to believe in the locals. If NPCs act stupid, they act stupid in the grandest way possible. Did they detect us during our initial approach? No. So they shouldn’t detect us now either.
As I looked for the best place to land on, I was constantly distracted by Eunice. I did not like the trajectory of her flight from the very beginning — the deviation was too great. It was possible to adjust course using the suit’s thrusters, but this required a certain amount of skill which, according to my prior observations, Eunice did not have. As soon as I got close to the cruiser and attached myself to its hull with magnets, I rotated myself and put my feet on the hull. Pausing a moment until my wife’s boot came flying past me, I grabbed it with both hands and pulled with all my might.
“Kill the thrusters!” I yelled, but Eunice, overwhelmed by her suit’s controls, did not hear me. The second of confusion cost us dearly — the magnets failed and we went tumbling back into space.
“I got it! I got it!” Eunice fired her thrusters again, sending us in a roll. Time rushed on and her movements became impulsive and abrupt. As I tried to compensate with my own thrusters, we slammed back hard against the hull and began sliding along its length.
“Kill the throttle!” I yelled, trying to grab onto whatever slid past us. “Cut your throttle!”
One of the myriad antennae slipped past my hand. I grabbed it, and my suit’s servos whined from the stress — Eunice’s suit was blasting at full thrust.
“Brainiac! Shut her off!” I pleaded, realizing that Eunice wouldn’t do anything on her own. Poker has the concept of ‘tilt’ when a player loses his head and makes error after error trying to make it right. For all intents and purposes, Eunice was now on tilt.
“About time you asked me,” the ship’s computer said pedantically, and the tension in my arm dissipated. Eunice’s armor had finally gone still. The magnets snapped on again, attaching us to the cruiser’s hull. But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, Brainiac announced:
“Two fighters are heading in your direction. ETA is ten seconds.”
So they’d noticed us after all!
“Let’s get out of here!” I pressed myself to one of the spires, pulled my immobilized wife to me and jumped, deactivating the magnets. A couple of seconds of weightlessness and we were again drawn to the hull. Attaching Eunice to the base of the spire, I leaned on top of her and activated the protective screen. Hopefully we look more like a sensor array than a couple of pirates out spacewalking around their prey.
“How are you? Eunice?” There was no reply. “Brainiac, turn on her comms. Eunice, can you hear me?”
“Get off my foot, you oaf!” my wife snapped angrily. “Yes, I’m fine!”
“Are you going to panic again?” I asked in as neutral a tone as I could muster, resisting my urge to curse and yell. We had almost blown the entire operation.
“No. I was just a little confused,” the girl replied with irritation. She sounded embarrassed by her unprofessionalism.
“You can’t argue with hormones,” I agreed, recalling the books about pregnancy I had read in preparation for our child, but then I hurried to change topics. “Brainiac, what’s the status of those fighters?”
“They’ve gone. They scanned the hull and returned back to their hangar. Everyone seems fixated on the light show we put on. Hang on…I don’t like the look of that antenna that just popped out of the hull. It looks like a close perimeter sensor.”
“Roger. We’ll cut through the hull right here then.”
Eunice nodded and began setting up a small force field that would prevent the air from rushing out when we broke through the cruiser’s hull. Brainiac had explained that the hull integrity sensors were very sensitive to any drop in pressure aboard the vessel. I had seen this device in use aboard Aalor’s ship and couldn’t help but wonder: Why could physical objects pass through it, but not air? The answer turned out to be simple — the system was one of the most important additions to any spacecraft. Whenever beam cannons overwhelmed ships’ shields, the plasma would perforate the hull causing a myriad holes and therefore air leaks. Not all captains liked to work in armor suits — in fact, I was particular in my affection for the hunk of iron I was constantly encased in. Many other captains preferred to stand on the bridge and show off their beautiful physique. You can’t breathe much without air, so especially powerful cruisers would expend one of their integration slots on this force field system to ensure that hull integrity would be maintained during battles. I had no idea whether a luxury cruise ship would carry one of these or not, so I decided to play it safe. Relying on dumb luck was the last thing I wanted.
Having finished installing the device, Eunice activated the plasma cutter. I waited nearby, looking away from the bright sparks. The Precians were vigilant and any sudden movement could ruin our boarding operation. This was also why I removed the camouflage field generator from my armor suit and attached it to the place whe
re we were working. The ‘antenna amplifier’ that concealed us, should remain even after we’d boarded the cruiser.
“Ready!” Eunice pushed in the hull segment she’d cut out and stepped aside, allowing me to enter first. ‘Ladies first’ was not a principle we observed in our family. I squeezed through the opening and plunged three meters to the deck floor. Though my armor suit softened the fall, activating its stabilizers, the blow still jarred me. Eunice dived in after me and I managed to catch her near the floor. A pirate has to be a gentleman sometimes too. My spatial scanner modeled the cabin we were in and Brainiac helpfully identified it as the utility closet. Since the trip to the foggy asteroids lasted only a few hours, most of these facilities were typically empty. Why take on unnecessary cargo, after all?
“Brainiac, help us out! Where should we plug you in?”
“The right wall, lower plug. I will highlight it for you!”
A thin laser beam pointed at the wall I needed. I took a remote terminal configured for Brainiac out of my inventory. It would let my ship’s computer interface directly with the cruiser’s systems, as if they were linked by a cable. A handy little piece of gear whose main drawback was how incredibly expensive it was. On the whole, I have to mention that this entire operation had turned out to be ridiculously troublesome and costly. We had had to attach rocket engines to the asteroids, aim one of the rocks at the cruiser, have time to remove the engines before the asteroids came out of the belt, buy and deliver a lot of colored dust, pump it into several harvesters and, well, buy the harvesters themselves. The credits had poured with cosmic speed and, looking at the explosion we had engineered, I knew exactly where they had gone. But even that was nothing. The biggest blow to my gaming account was incurred by the information, or rather the list of passengers and the coordinates of this particular cruiser. If it weren’t for my new partner Vargen, who had turned a tidy profit selling the loot from the Uldan base, I would’ve never dared getting involved in such a dubious enterprise. However, we had the cash and we had to use it intelligently.