A Space Merchant’s Tale
&
A Shotgun Wedding – In Which Will gets Married, but not to Taita
Two Tales from The Keeper’s Universe
By Matthew Mangum
And Katie Leffel
Copyright 2014 Matthew Mangum & Katie Leffel – All Rights Reserved
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Special Thanks to the members of The Keeper’s Universe Forum for continued inspiration of stories.
Notes from the author:
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Table of Contents:
A Space Merchant’s Tale
A Shotgun Wedding
Sample of Pangea Liberation – a novel
A Space Merchant’s Tale
Thomas Verch Angharad was a space merchant. It was a bit of good luck that brought him his own ship. For years he had plied his way through the space lanes living off what he could buy and sell, and what people would pay him to ship. He was the kind of person that generally liked quiet spaces all to himself, but recently he had been getting kind of lonely on his long deep space runs.
So when Thomas had visited Galantos on a rare run into the more well-known portions of the galaxy he had bought a cat. But the large yellow furred feline he had dubbed Peaches was more than just your usual cat. This fine particular animal had come from BioTech Labs, specializing in genetic alterations to increase intelligence. In all respects Peaches was quite normal looking, except for perhaps his size. The doctors at BioTech had claimed he was a crossbreed between your average house cat and a small bobcat. Peaches also had a computer chip inserted into his extra intelligent brain. This little chip allowed the cat to transmit his thoughts to a computer and allow him to express them.
Thomas was quite pleased with his new pet. He had always had a fondness for animals, and a cat that could talk; now that was the ticket. Peaches was also a quick learner. Why in no time at all the cat had learned to program the navigational computer. Of course the whole system had to be done by voice recognition. A cat couldn’t do a whole lot without fingers and opposable thumbs in a ship designed for humans, but Thomas being somewhat mechanically inclined soon set about solving this problem. Larger buttons were installed and the weapons system was set up to fire by batting a toy mouse around.
Peaches quickly became an expert at the weapons system. The computer would select targets, but Peaches was so fast at batting his mouse back and forth that the computer was hard pressed to keep the guns on target.
It was during one particularly long run through deep space that our story really begins. Thomas had accepted to haul a load of rum from an out of the way planet in the Menchet Region, all the way to the edge of the known galaxy at Star’s End. Thomas had fallen asleep and Peaches was taking his turn watching the computer readouts. There was no simple direct route from the Menchet Region to Star’s End so they were forced to exit hyperspace often, readjust their course to avoid interstellar gravitational wells and then back into hyperspace. The two companions had been travelling for over a week and still had a few more days to go.
“Hey Thomas, wakey wakey.”
Thomas stirred to life and stared at the numbers of the dial counting down. He pulled his safety harness on just to make sure and Peaches climbed into his own unique harness. The dial reached zero, and the computer failed to disengage the hyperdrive. Thomas sighed and reached over to manually disengage. This was starting to become a problem more and more often. Thomas would have to look into it when he had some more time and a decent set of tools.
The blur of hyperspace returned to the normal star field and for a moment Thomas admired the unique constellations in front of him. Constellations depended on your point in space and Thomas figured he’d probably never pass through this exact point again, so he traced a few shapes and smiled. Then the scanner alarms went off. It was reporting a couple of Frigates and numerous fighters coming up at them from the rear.
“Those shouldn’t be here in the middle of nowhere,” Thomas mumbled to himself. Peaches bounded out his harness and with two front paws on the edge of the scanner gazed at the screen.
“Pirates?”
“Probably.”
“We’ll give them a taste of laser. I’m sure it’s a lot worse than that junk you feed me.”
“But at least that junk is good for you.”
“I don’t see you eating it.”
“That’s because your bodily needs are different.”
“Yeah, I need salmon, you need beef.”
“Fine then, you shoot down all those fighters I’ll feed you salmon for a week.”
“Deal.” Peaches leaped to the weapons control system and toggled the targeting computer. The ship carried four independent laser cannons, each swivel mounted and able to give covering fire over the entire ship. Peaches punched another large button activating the control panel underneath the main panel which he had talked Thomas into installing. It had four mice. Peaches rolled onto his back into the soft cushion that he had insisted be there and began batting at the mice; all four paws flying.
Thomas, still strapped in, had toggled the maneuvering controls to manual and had the steering column gripped firmly in both hands. He considered himself a pretty good pilot and had even been offered a security job flying a fighter covering merchant vessels like his own. He had turned that job down, more money in trafficking goods.
The fighters reached them before the Frigates did. The small one man ships opened fire, but the heavy shielding that Thomas had installed held up. It was then that the communications console lit up. “Power down your ship and we won’t kill you.”
Thomas disregarded the message. He had never lost a load to space pirates and he wasn’t about to lose this one, too much money involved, that and he had a reputation to protect. Thomas continued his erratic evasive maneuvers while letting Peaches do his work on the fighters.
Peaches was an animal when it came to dealing with large amounts of fighters. All four paws were flying back and forth tearing apart the mice built over the firing mechanisms. Laser blast after laser blast tore through the shields and armor of the old pirate fighters. Soon none were left. The computer voiced Peaches’ whoop of triumph. “Looks like we’re going to need to find a world with a lot of salmon on hand, and none of that canned stuff.”
Thomas smiled, “Good work bud.” He then toggled the communicator to the open frequency the pirates had used. “Do you still insist on messing with us? Our weapons can fire four times faster than yours. You may kill us but we’ll at least take one of your Frigates with us.
A tired sounding voice responded. “Sir, you have our respect. Your gunner must have the reflexes of a cat. You may go in peace,”
“You made a wise choice. Let the galaxy know you don’t mess with Thomas Verch Angharad and his pal Peaches.” Thomas spoke into the communicator while toggling back on the hyperdrive. Instantly they were back to safety and on their way to Star’s End.
A Space Merchant's Tale & A Shotgun Wedding - Two Tales from The Keeper's Universe Page 1
