Contents
Cover
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1, Borgol
Chapter 2, Aeolus Investigations
Chapter 3, Hanging on Cardin's Paradise
Chapter 4, Universal Underwriters
Chapter 5, Desperate Times
Chapter 6, Da E'krets Material
Chapter 7, Paradigm Shift
Chapter 8, The Ship Who Thought
Chapter 9, Mystery of the Wraixain Educator
Chapter 10, Jis Boc Seckan
Chapter 11, Life in Hyperspace
Chapter 12, Investigators
Chapter 13, Cops
Chapter 14, Meeting the Talmon
Chapter 15, Dinner With Sori
Chapter 16, Concierge
Chapter 17, Thugs With Guns
Chapter 18, Cleanup, Aisle 14
Chapter 19, Designs by Klendin
Chapter 20, Taking the Bait
Chapter 21, Distractions
Chapter 22, Hepca
Chapter 23, Undercover
Chapter 24, The Wild West
Chapter 25, Underground
Chapter 26, Hardware
Chapter 27, Bullies
Chapter 28, Spider on a Plain
Chapter 29, Emancipation Day
Chapter 30, Attack of the Pigeon Launchers
Chapter 31, The Big House
Chapter 32, The Man in Charge
Chapter 33, No Loose Ends
Chapter 34, The Voyage Home
Chapter 35, Arrangements
Chapter 36, Naragene Nine
Chapter 37, Kill Them All
Author’s Note
Paladin, Chapter Three
AVENGER
Aeolus Investigations (Episode 2)
A Lexi Stevens Adventure
by
Robert E Colfax
Copyright © 2019 Robert C Kirk
All rights reserved.
The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.
Cover art by Dave Kirk
Proof readers Dee Bullock, Dave Kirk — The First Team
Special thanks to Rebekah
Thank you all
Chapter 1
Borgol
Urania watched with increasing satisfaction as her three partners and her new friend Jis Boc Seckan emptied their clips at the erratically moving targets. They were fast learners. All of them, other than Jis, now had reloading down to an art. Jis wasn’t that far behind. “Ron,” Urania called out over the team’s comm-gear, “You’re still playing catch up with your targets. We worked on this in the simulator. Live action is no different. Lead, don’t follow. Geena, looking sharp, honey.”
She watched them reload yet again and continue to blast away at the small targets. Lexi, to no one’s surprise, proved to be a natural. Over a decade of championship-level competitive fencing with the rapier, sabre and the epee had left her with a degree of hand, eye and muscle coordination the others had to work at to match. There was also no telling what impact the recent unanticipated acceleration of her neural processes might be having on the overall performance of her nervous system.
Jis, after over an hour of this, was still flinching every time she pulled the trigger of her weapon, despite which, she was managing to hit almost all of her targets. The only child of the ruler of Ackalon, Jis probably never entertained a violent thought in her entire sheltered life, far less an actual confrontation. Ackalonians were universally known as the gentlest species of humanity in the vast expanse of the Accord.
Urania knew that Jis had some degree of precognitive ability. She suspected the woman was more or less cheating, shooting where she knew the target was going to be. If she can do that when people are shooting back at her I don’t have a problem with it. Damn, she realized, I’m really thinking outside of the box these days. I don’t think I used to be able to do that. She laughed silently to herself. If only my Vankovian builders could see me now.
Joining the team only yesterday afternoon, Jis lacked the experience the others acquired using the shipboard simulator. The fake guns the team practiced with while on the ship had the weight and feel of the real thing. They had a muzzle flash, a convincing noise and kick. The holographic, computer-generated targets looked like they had been hit, or not, as the case may be. Her partners spent at least an hour a day, wearing holo-viewer visors, practicing in her relatively empty hold, both singly and as a group, on the thirty-one-day trip through hyperspace from Cardin’s Paradise to Borgol where Jis unexpectedly joined the team.
Lexi purchased the indoor simulator in the short time they were between jobs on Cardin’s Paradise after a return trip to the shop where she found the comm-gear. That first purchase was now routinely used to stay in contact with each other. Pete Isher’s had become her favorite place to shop these days.
She also picked up a half-dozen Glocks and several thousand rounds of ammunition from Pete‘s shop. Lexi considered it somewhat ludicrous, buying Earth-made weapons one hundred and sixty-seven light-years distant from the manufacturer on Earth. She only recently learned that most of the artillery used by the advanced space-threading civilization known as the Accord was clandestinely purchased on her home planet. “Lexi,” Urania asked, “can you work with Jis for a while?”
With the permission of the Borgolian government, they set up their shooting range on a small, rocky island inhabited only by a species of small, raucous flying reptiles which scattered as soon as Urania landed. Any of the braver, or more curious, reptiles who hung around after the landing dispersed as soon as the shooting started.
The computer-controlled range was elaborate and totally portable. Lexi was pleased with the design her teammates came up with. Ron and Urania, following her explanations of what she had in mind, fabricated eight self-propelled carts mounted on chassis similar to that found on Earth tanks. The treads allowed the squat carts to climb over the rough terrain of the island, while remaining low enough to the ground that their position was usually hidden from the shooters.
The carts, as they rumbled across the landscape, launched small saucers in random directions at high speeds, occasionally directly towards the shooters. It was all computer controlled by Urania, the command computer of their starship as well as their sentient AI partner. Tiny charges built into the saucers, randomly detonated by Urania, caused the targets to bob, drop and weave. Each cart was a third the size of a small European car. Each carried one hundred and eighty targets ranging in size from that of bread plates to salad plates.
Lexi thought of the targets as clay pigeons. I never really understood why they’re called clay pigeons. OK, granted, they were probably originally made out of baked clay. Makes sense, right? But pigeons? That’s rather specific. And what the hell is a “skeet”? she wondered as she holstered her gun and walked over to coach Jis. Baked clay discs don’t look anything like pigeons. If I was still back on Earth, I could Google it. But then I wouldn’t be here on an alien planet with the four best friends I have in the galaxy. Literally! In the galaxy! Although the galaxy is a big place, so at least in this section of it. How wild is that? I probably wouldn’t be wondering why our targets are called clay pigeons either. It wouldn’t have come up. I bet there aren’t any real pigeons on this planet anyway. Probably a flying reptile fills that niche. So, cool, I introduced pigeons to a planet that has never had pigeons. Pigeons that can’t breed and overrun the place like rabbits did in Australia. I read once that some British idiot imported rabbits so that he would have something to shoot at from his front porch. Big mistake, rabbi
ts being rabbits. He should have used clay rabbits. Or clay pigeons. Safer, much safer. I bet Geena would like Pretty Woman. I’m not even going to try to figure out why that thought just popped up. Although she does look somewhat like Julia especially now that she’s letting her hair grow out a little.
Lexi was dressed in what she thought of as her pirate outfit. Brown leather boots, leather shorts and vest over a white cotton dress shirt, knotted at her midriff. At six-foot-three, slim and muscular, it was a good look for her, and she knew it. Not that she was trying to attract male attention. She already had it. Or for that matter, female attention. She was letting her red hair grow out, too. When it got long enough, she intended to braid it with a steel ball at the end. Although, maybe not. A steel ball on the end of her braid would be dangerous when they were flying around in zero-gee, which they did a lot. After watching Pirates of the Caribbean with her, both of her lovers had come up with similar attire. Yeah, we all look damn hot. Ron even looks swashbuckling.
Jis was wearing upper-class Ackalonian native dress which basically meant she was swathed in silk tulle; the material wedding veils, in the United States at least, on Earth are made of. Of course, it wasn’t silk, but the effect was the same. It wasn’t clear to the others what prevented it from unwrapping. She had dispensed with the customary head covering in order to maintain her full field of vision. The holster strapped to her waist looked, well, highly incongruous.
All four of them were right-handed. After lunch they would reload the carts and start practicing with the gun in their left hands. Then they would move on to using two guns at once, if they wanted to take the time and still felt up to it. Lexi felt, and the others agreed, that the time they were spending on target practice on this island was well worth it. Still, there was always the simulator on the ship.
They estimated that they would have eleven additional days to practice during their transit to Naragene Nine, the world from which Kahvia E’Kret, along with her two children, Kacen and Koe, vanished, presumably kidnapped, while vacationing three months ago. It was now the team’s job to find and, if possible, bring them home, making Naragene their destination for the next leg of their journey.
Chapter 2
Aeolus Investigations
The job that led the Aeolus team to Borgol came at them out of left-field. To everyone’s utter amazement, the team had been asked for by name. With no insurance recovery fee involved they would have never heard about it otherwise. There was no bidding. Nor was this a job they would have chosen to bid on anyway; even after hearing the details and accepting the assignment they still couldn’t honestly claim to feel fully qualified. They almost turned it down for that reason, until realizing that despite their lack of experience, they might be the victims’ best chance. Possibly their only chance.
Aeolus Investigations, the business name of their partnership, worked as insurance investigators, recovering lost and stolen objects. Unlike the several other opportunities they were considering, they had no doubt taking this one would bring them into personal, and possibly deadly, contact with a criminal element for the first time in their careers. While it didn’t enter into their consideration, whether they succeeded or failed, they wouldn’t lose money on this job. On most investigations, they absorbed their expenses, hoping the recovery fee eventually covered them. On this job, the client was covering all expenses.
When Lexi joined the team it was named Samue Investigations, a mother and son partnership consisting of Geena and Ron Samue. With Lexi replacing Geena as team leader, the new partnership was now considering jobs that were more physically dangerous than any Geena would have selected when the team consisted solely of her and Ron.
Just over ten weeks back, while the team was still on Earth, they ran up against a crew of Helgan bounty hunters. The Helgans immediately challenged them to what they termed an “honor bout.” Helgans though of themselves as swordsmen. An honor bout was mortal combat with swords. In this case, the Helgans justified the challenge as they and Aeolus team were competing for possession of the ancient Ackalonian artifact known as the Rose of Light, recovered only hours earlier by Aeolus.
Urania, the fourth member of the team, was a partner, a friend and also a sentient starship. While Urania’s fate if they lost the bout against the Helgans was an open question, the three human members of the team would have wound up either dead or captured and sold as slaves on Helga. Lexi had been sword fighting competitively since her early teens. The Helgans, being less skilled than everyone, themselves included, assumed, didn’t stand a chance. At the time she was growing up, learning the sword had just been something cool to do, back during her old life on Earth. Her dad never really understood her interest, but always came to watch her bouts. He had been a good sport about a lot of things.
Lexi really hadn’t been gone from Earth all that long, but still, she already missed him. Her mother died when she was four, leaving her father as her sole parent. Talking with him on the phone a few times a month was no longer possible. She left Earth just under three months ago with no more than an email telling him she would be traveling out of the country and would be out of touch for a while. She wished she could have told him the unbelievable truth.
Earth’s most advanced space technology was the International Space Station. She anticipated that explaining to her father she was now bopping about the galaxy on a starship with her alien boyfriend and her alien boyfriend’s alien mother solving crimes might have been difficult at best. She was pretty sure there must be a joke in there somewhere. He was a space-alien with a talent for brewing coffee. She was a doctoral candidate at a prestigious university in Washington State. Together they solve crimes. Nope. Not as funny as I assumed.
Since the bloody encounter with the Helgans, Lexi made training her team to defend themselves her highest priority. She immediately began training her human partners in the art of swordsmanship. If nothing else, it was good training for visual acuity, reflexes, and some otherwise rarely used muscles. The use of archaic, edged weapons was totally foreign to them; no one, other than the Helgans, used them at all. She couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t run into Helgans again on another job someday. Geena had been captured by them on Earth. If there was a next time, and Lexi was the one captured, her partners were going to need to step up.
Urania coached all three of them, via the new simulator, in the use of handguns during the month-long flight from Cardin’s Paradise to Borgol. Unlike Lexi, who had never used a gun, both Geena and Ron were already fair shots. Their profession could be dangerous, yet they had never taught themselves to be more than just familiar with firearms. Lexi demanded expert marksmanship. At her insistence, they were all now coming up to speed.
Geena was the only one with any prior training at all in hand-to-hand combat. The six-foot-five woman with the wild blonde hair hadn’t practiced in nearly thirty years. Unacceptable. They would need to hire a coach for that training. Unless there was a way for Urania to handle martial arts training the same way she was coaching gun play. Hmmm. Definitely something to look into. Not only was the training necessary for obvious survival reasons, intense exercise while in zero-gee in hyperspace was medically mandated. Although her condition was getting better with the reformulated meds Lexi came up with, Geena was already suffering from skeletal calcium loss. Besides, it gave them something additional to do to while away the boring hours traveling between the stars. The various forms of martial arts would help keep it interesting.
Geena, in her mid-fifties, had been in the insurance business for thirty years. Despite her chronological age, she didn’t look older than twenty-something courtesy of the anti-geriatric medications she took daily. Her looks took Lexi by surprise when she first met her, thinking she was Ron’s girlfriend, or even his wife. She was hoping for sister because she wanted him for her boyfriend. Geena wasn’t any of those .
Geena’s son Ron, twenty-seven, grew up in the business. He had been Geena’s sole partner since he was old enough to carry his
weight. Crane Samue, Geena’s life-partner and Ron’s father, died almost twelve years ago in a skiing accident while the family was vacationing. According to Geena, he at least had been relatively skilled with handguns and other firearms. Geena supposed she may have been just as good with a gun back when she first met Crane. Her early career as a police detective on Cardin’s Paradise gave her that training. Her last case as a cop resulted in her meeting Crane, falling in love, and joining him as an interstellar insurance investigator on his antiquated starship. She thrilled to that life from the start.
Lexi met Ron while he was undercover, attempting to track down a stolen Ackalonian artifact. Ron and Geena were pursuing indications it might be on Earth. With nothing to show for their efforts after two years, they decided to drop the investigation.
After their very successful dinner date, Lexi spent the next afternoon more or less stalking Ron. She wanted to understand why he said he needed to immediately leave the country. She kind of thought she might like to go with him. So she spent Sunday afternoon sitting in her car outside of his apartment, brooding about what she wanted to do with her own life. When he drove away, she tailed him to an abandoned farm. His starship was hidden in the property’s barn. She stowed away on the theory that if Earth was being invaded by aliens, someone should at least try to do something to stop them.
She soon realized she was completely off-base with the invasion notion. After convincing the two Samues that they needed her, she forced a renegotiation of their partnership agreement. As part of that agreement, thee unexpectedly sentient command-comp, Urania, of their starship also became a full partner.
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