Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya, page 15
Jason wasn’t so much a fool as to think he could flee and get away indefinitely unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life running and hiding, and he did not want that. He wanted a resolution as quickly as one could be safely secured. Jason could not know for certain- it was surmised- that Felone had realized he had seen through her but she had been right about one thing; that she had not been able to hide her devious plot from him. It had been more than clear enough for Jason to see written plainly in her cold eyes and recognize what it was; treachery of the blackest sort. She decided to end their business relationship, and such endings with Felone were always violent and permanent. Why share when she could have it all? Felone was not good at hiding her thoughts as she was too volatile and unstable for that. Jason wasn’t going to be the patsy at the end of this, at least not without a fight, and now the fight was out in the open. He had defined the rules, as he always had. He was the Handler for a reason.
However, even if he was wrong about Felone planning to dump him at this time, it was growing clearer by the year that the day when Felone would decide to cut loose was coming and sooner rather than later, but Jason seriously doubted he was wrong about this. He was seldom wrong when it came to reading people- that was his greatest asset if truth be known- and he was damned if he was going to help Felone kill Tanya only to have Felone stab him the first time he turned his back on her.
Most likely she would just come straight forward and kill him with her bare hands, an act in which Felone particularly reveled, and not the way Jason wanted to go out. A person could scream a long time in Felone’s tender embrace. Now she would have to get past Adjudicator’s guns before such an opportunity would present itself, and Jason had to smile as he sat back and sipped his whisky, pondering the unknowns.
He had all the time in the Universe to figure it all out. He wouldn’t have wanted to be in either Tanya or Felone’s shoes at that precise moment, and since he was assuredly in the most secure position, why did he then have such an uneasy feeling that had nothing to do with the expensive whisky he was drinking? The whisky was smooth but his stomach was troubled.
Chapter 56
“You may now purchase the location of your enemy.” The air said without any warning at Tanya’s right ear. Tanya didn’t jump, but it was close with as hair-trigger ready to fight as she was at that moment. She held up a hand to signal to those in the corridor behind her. They were all in one group now, spread out down the corridor on high alert and weapons up and at the ready; an extremely formidable party even on a Kievor Trade Station. Everywhere they searched everyone seemed in a hurry to take care of business they had elsewhere, but Tanya hadn’t known how else to go about it without splitting their party and subjecting themselves to Felone’s guerrilla warfare tactics, so splitting the group was no longer an option she was willing to consider without being able to purchase Felone’s location. Felone would pick them apart piecemeal. But now her location was no longer to be a secret.
“Agreed.” Tanya said.
“Your quarry has departed the Kievor Trade Station, as of twenty-four seconds ago.”
“Thanks so much.” Tanya said, but it was a blessing in disguise because now she could force Malcomb and the children out of her vendetta. She couldn’t fight the way she wanted with them in the way, and she was damned if she was going to be responsible for the deaths of any more of these children, hard eyed and mature in every way that they were. “We’ll be parting ways now Malcomb. There’s nothing more you can do to help me at this point.”
Malcomb just looked at her and Tanya saw the resolve that was there, but she was fairly certain she would be able to outmaneuver him this time. Tanya wasn’t sure what her next step would be but of one thing she could be fairly certain; it would not be a direct space attack. Her little Starfire would be no match for Adjudicator and probably not against whatever new ship Felone had acquired. Tanya had some thinking of her own to do, but she would do it while she was getting as far from Malcomb and the children as she could.
“As you say.” Malcomb said, but Tanya suddenly didn’t believe him. The resolve was still there in his eyes large as life.
“Don’t try to follow, Malcomb.” Tanya said seriously. “There’s nothing that can be done now and I’m just going to find a place to lay low. It’s over.”
“Alright then.” Malcomb said with the hint of a small smile. “If that’s the case, then you have the time to say your goodbyes this time before you go.”
“I’ll stay in touch.” Tanya said as she impulsively gave Malcomb a big hug. She held him for a bit and then pushed away. “It’s time for me to get going. This isn’t goodbye.”
No it isn’t, Malcomb thought as they watched Tanya walk away. It wasn’t goodbye at all, but he was sure Tanya already realized that. He had seen that in her eyes even though she was refusing to admit it.
“We are going after her, aren’t we?” Jerin asked. Jerin was second in command and he knew Malcomb as well as Malcomb knew himself.
“Of course we are.” Malcomb said. “I’m surprised you had to ask.” But it was said lightheartedly. Of course they were going after them, once he figured out how they were going to do it. He had a lot of thinking to do.
“Good.” Jerin said. “The men will be pleased.”
Men, Malcomb thought, knowing why Tanya wanted them out of it, but the code by which they lived forbade their leaving any enemy behind themselves. Where they had lived the only way to survive had been to make your enemies know that to start something meant it would continue until it was finished. There was no forgiveness within the ghetto, and there could be no forgiveness here or now. Through the discipline by which they lived Malcomb had forged many honorable young men and women who had gone on to escape the ghetto, so the code- and the honor it upheld- meant that this could not be over until it was completely over. Simply put, it was a matter of honor and blood.
Chapter 57
The craft was a whale and moved like one, and new ship and owner were moving forward together under their own thrust for the first time. Felone relaxed and felt confident at the controls. She could fly anything with wings or without, at home and an expert in any cockpit or bridge, familiar with every computer or targeting system ever written with human code, and if she didn’t like any of the operating systems or programs the ship came with she’d write new ones herself.
She had been the brains of the Organization from the beginning, the technical expert, and Jason just a Handler- though a good one and that why she had tolerated him. In the end he had proved to be little more than an over self-glorified bumbler. He would never have been able to run the Organization on his own. Further Jason had always liked the good life, going out, partying and living the life of the jet-setting playboy, while Felone had spent her decades sitting in front of innumerable computer screens, or often enough wiring them herself, on her nonstop quest for knowledge. She was now eager to see how Jason would handle himself without her to tell him what to do!
Felone could not feel the inertial reaction of the thrust of the massive quad engines once they were lit and burning at full throttle, as they began to slowly accelerate the monstrous ship. The stabilizing regulator of the ship’s environmental gravity control was completely dampening any noticeable feeling of the acceleration, and that meant her new ship was really slow. Her enhancements, unique to only three people now living, had left her highly attuned to anything and everything physical, to a much higher degree than with normal humans. So it was immediately obvious they would not gain enough velocity to make a jump before they reached the limit of the Kievor’s Safe Zone, but with her new ship’s weaponry, most notably the four independently targeting photon cannon, she would gladly look forward to a direct and immediate confrontation with nearly anyone who wanted one.
Felone was really not in a good mood at this point though, despite her returned feeling of security. Whoever had owned this ship before her had allowed the worst kind of conditions aboard ship imaginable, and the ship was indescribably filthy. The accommodations had been designed for the lowest paid class of sailors as well, because those would have been the only ones willing to crew her. Even the Captain’s quarters would have been more like a closet within Adjudicator than a suite.
She would have thought that in a ship so large they could have made the accommodations for her sailors just a bit more comfortable. Jason would pay dearly for stealing Adjudicator and the comfort with which Felone was accustomed. Felone wasn’t a jet-setter, but the only comfort to be found upon this old relic was knowing that nothing smaller than a Battleship was going to disturb her security. She supposed she would have to work on the rest later.
The targeting system was busy identifying all the numerous ships, thousands upon thousands surrounding the Station, but it wasn’t picking up the one signature she hoped would be there. She had hoped that Jason had been fool enough not to leave when he had the chance, possibly hoping to pick off either her or Tanya as they attempted to depart and not expecting her to come out in a miniature battleship! With her massive ship’s photon cannons now charged at full capacity he wouldn’t know what hit him until it was far too late, but the signature wasn’t there. She had programmed her acquisitions program with Adjudicator’s exact specifications, and if it had been there somewhere among these masses of ships, no matter what name its identification beacon was broadcasting, her program would have recognized it.
“Damn!” Felone swore. “Why does everyone always have to do everything the hard way!”
Far beyond the limit of the Kievor’s Safe Zone they finally reached a stable velocity for jump and Felone and her ship disappeared into the ether.
Chapter 58
Tanya didn’t move Starfire from where the orange tractor beam placed it just outside the hull of the Station until her own acquisitions program had determined that neither of the two monstrous ships which were now her enemies were lurking and waiting for her. Neither were present, both were gone, and it a shame they couldn’t have eliminated one another in the process as was often common when ships with such firepower battled one another.
Tanya took a moment to marvel upon the Kievor Trade Station bulking next to her. The curving hull of the Station was visible for many kilometers in any direction she looked, before the curvature of the Station vanished below the horizon. Massive! If it wasn’t for the shiny trans-metal and the endless miniature-like ships coming and going everywhere Tanya wouldn’t have been able to tell she wasn’t on a natural world, so very vast and wholly encompassing was the Station.
Tanya had no idea what Malcomb was planning, only knowing he would be planning something. She could hardly forget the steely look that came into his eyes when she demanded he not follow her.
Tanya was not particularly worried about Starfire being attacked before crossing the Kievor’s protected zone. Only a fool would tempt the Kievor’s incredible weaponry in such a manner, and if someone did violate the rule and actually shoot her down then she would at least be comforted knowing there would be revenge. The Kievors were quite diligent about enforcing their Safe Zones and the security it afforded their customers. If she were attacked the aggressor would not live to gloat over his treacherous victory.
After reassuring herself that neither of her heavily armed enemies were waiting for her and wanting to be away from Malcomb and the children as quickly as possible, she gave her little ship everything it had and was instantly glued into her crash seat for the few moments until they reached jump velocity, and then Tanya and Starfire prepared to depart real space kilometers before the limit of the Kievor’s Safe Zone.
The massive acceleration and the crushingly overbearing inertia slamming her into her crash seat was actually for herself; as a physical personal reminder of how fiercely she loved life and wanted to live. The sensations of fighting those gees, the rush of adrenaline, the intense pressure hammering her chest, was akin to the physical battle against the forces of nature, the feeling of aliveness during battle brought memories of how that fierce desire to live had been created within her, since her childhood that she remembered so clearly now.
A brilliant light erupted in space directly in front of Starfire and then they were gone into the ether of inner space. The snap and brief nausea of the conversion, along with the feeling of being nowhere at all and everywhere at once was something that Tanya had never completely become used to.
Whether it was a different dimension, a twist of time or even just another physical plane, its mechanics and physical properties were not fully understood yet- by human scientists at least. They could still only surmise and theorize of its true properties, and so it was mostly an enigma to mankind.
That didn’t prevent its use. Humans had learned to manipulate gravity to some small extent, enough to create internal gravity in ships and had advanced enough recently to be able to create the gravitational wave anomalies- extremely dense fields of highly charged particles the dense mass of which creates the powerful localized gravity field required to dimple real space and open the jump portals- which in turn has allowed the opening up the Universe at large to mankind’s expanding hordes.
Now, with the ability to escape the slums of ruined planets along with a proclivity for insane breeding rates, mankind was expanding exponentially in every direction. It sounded like a familiar story to Tanya. She was sure she had heard it before. Real space vanished behind her as the opening snapped shut behind her like the closing of an eye.
Chapter 59
Jason wasn’t surprised when the monstrous armed freighter arrived out of jump and after only a moment began to turn in a direction that would take it past Adjudicator’s hiding place in the rubble field of the far-flung orbital rings of Patoria, a nearly uninhabited planet that apparently wasn’t much good for anything.
There were a few gas mining operations going on in the rings but only three small mineral extractions and one research station on the surface of the inhospitable freezing world below. Jason had thought it an excellent place to hide out until he could formulate a plan but the monstrous ore hauler set every internal alarm he possessed to ringing danger.
Why an ore hauler here would send a shiver running up his spine, his instinctual alarms to warning of danger, Jason couldn’t immediately guess. Despite the fact that the mining operations here were small scale, compared to some places at least, he had still seen dozens of smaller ore haulers coming and going since he had been there.
But none had been armed to the teeth as was this one, he noted, as passive scans tripped alarms aboard Adjudicator. They weren’t mining anything they had to guard from pirates. Such a heavily armed ship was definitely out of place here, Jason decided, and such a ship could easily find more lucrative work.
And suddenly Jason knew; it was Felone, and there was no question about it. Only Felone could have found him this quickly. Jason immediately brought Adjudicator up to power and, not caring what anyone at the controls of the ore freighter thought, ran a wide open full-spectrum scan of the advancing vessel.
The freighter’s photon cannons charged and readied to fire as Jason read the displays and simultaneously spun the nimble Adjudicator away from the approaching behemoth, which was still too far out of range to fire on Jason’s ship even if it possessed a super dreadnaught’s fusion capabilities. By the slow acceleration of the massive ship Jason was sure that it did not.
The scan completed and Jason finished reading all of the specifications as Adjudicator completed her maneuver and was given one quarter thrust, her main fusion thrusters so powerful that even at low power Jason was still pressed back in his crash seat, the inertia felt even over the efforts of internal gravity. This would be all it would take to outrun the monstrous ore hauler, but Jason wasn’t quite ready to depart the area. If he could find no weakness to exploit he would have to run from the much more heavily armed ship. Adjudicator stood no chance whatsoever against the four photon cannons of Felone’s ship.
The freighter immediately turned and began to follow Adjudicator, but it was instantly obvious it would be a losing race. Suddenly the incoming jump signature warning flashed on Jason’s screen and another ship entered real space directly behind the freighter, it appearing on Jason’s live zoom feed as a sudden brilliant point of light less than a kilometer behind the freighter at exactly the point in which the big ship itself had appeared moments ago. The freighter had obviously been followed by a first rate pilot, but the question in Jason’s mind was whether it was friend or foe.
That question was answered almost immediately as Adjudicator labeled the ship on his screen, but it was only visible on Jason’s long range feed for a moment as it entered, the image of the ship itself little more than a black dot in the center of the bright fusion emission blazing behind it as it burned at full thrust. Then the freighter began pouring green plasma back at the intruder, clouds of it that instantly obscured Jason’s view.
Chapter 60
Tanya was slammed back into her crash seat as Starfire converted from jump and her fusion thruster once again found purchase upon the tangibly solid vacuum, and the incomprehensible laws of inner space were left behind.
Confusion was once again exchanged for the regular, understandable and immutable laws of the known physical Universe. Tanya slammed the stick over sideways in anticipation of the incoming plasma cannon fire that she knew would momentarily be pouring back in her direction as soon as Felone’s recognition program identified Starfire. The merest touch would be sufficient to destroy her little Starfire and Tanya with it, which necessitated the extreme maneuvers, and the sudden inertial change nearly took her consciousness as she pushed Starfire and herself to their mutual breaking points. The little ship shuddered and groaned under the intense lateral stress, but Starfire was a strong ship.
