Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (38 page)

C3
Briefing Room

            I hope
you’ve enjoyed reading the novels in the Birthright series so far.  More are in
the works, but if you like those, you might want to consider some of my other
novels, samples of which follow. 

            The first is
The Fixer, a spin-off novel about the mysterious Garrett Drayven.  It’s a story
about how a normal guy went from university student to someone that deals with
the most prestigious and dangerous criminals on the planet.  Is a Fixer
good, evil, neither? This novel answers those questions.

            The
second is the first of my ongoing young adult series called Out of Nowhere.  Matt
Falken was a normal, everyday high school Freshman whose main goal in life was
to stay under the radar and finish school without suffering any lasting
emotional trauma. All that changed one day after he was almost kidnapped at a
mall; Matt discovered that his parents had neglected to mention that they had
moved to town from somewhere far away- like another planet.Destined for
obscurity, Matt unexpectedly learns that, while he is human like everyone else
he knows, his parents grew up on another planet populated by humans from Earth
that were taken there long ago. Having fled to Earth to avoid Matt getting
caught up in the long war their people were fighting, the past reaches out to
them as Matt’s parents learn that their son is desperately needed to help fight
their people’s ages-old enemy. Matt, like his parents, possesses a rare and
special genetic gift that allows him to be a necessary part of the computer
network defending their planet. Matt decides to investigate the offer, if for
no other reason than to learn about his people. He is accompanied by his best
friend, a neighbor girl named Jessie, as he travels ‘home’ only to find out
that not only is he a natural at running the Network, but without him the
humans will most likely be destroyed.

Out
of Nowhere is Young Adult science fiction.  If you like dragons, wizards,
or vampires, you have plenty of options these days, but if you like the
occasional blaster, alien, or starship, your choices are fewer in number. 
I aim to help fill this niche a bit with this title.

Chapter One

Five Years Ago

Garrett
Drayven stood over the body of his boss and, in the same way he always did,
took careful stock of the situation.  He had learned the hard way these last
couple of years to be ready for anything, and to never be surprised.

As his
blaster hung in his hand, he heard it tick a few times as the metals inside
cooled at different rates.  He had just used it to shoot his former boss and
cousin, Joren Vars, and two of his bodyguards.  From inside the study aboard
his cousin’s private starship, lavishly furnished in exotic, polished dark
woods, he knew nobody would have heard the noise.  There was nobody else aboard
the ship; besides, his cousin had ended enough people in this very room that it
had been designed to keep all the noise inside anyway.

He
cautiously walked over and toed the bodyguards, then knelt by each one to check
for a pulse at the neck, holding his blaster to each man’s temple as he did
so.  They were dead because they’d made too many assumptions about Garrett, and
he wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.  Oh, he mourned the need to take a life,
but these men weren’t exactly model citizens who would miss clocking in for
their shift tomorrow to cure a deadly disease or build an orphanage, either. 

Finally,
he approached his cousin, Joren.  The man was only a handful of years older
than Garrett- late twenties- and in good shape.  It was he who had introduced
Garrett to the life of a Fixer, of being the person people counted on to get
things done, both legal and otherwise.  It had been an enlightening and
fulfilling experience at first.  Then, things had taken a turn for the worse. 
Garrett tried to force the last few weeks out of his head and remember the good
times the cousins had been through together as he checked the man for a pulse.

He stepped
over to his cousin’s desk and efficiently rifled through the drawers and secret
compartment that Joren thought nobody else knew about.  Garrett grabbed a few
data chips, a folio containing some hardcopy documents, and the all-important
client list.  Garrett already had access to everything Joren knew and used for
the business; what he needed was the secure contact information of the people
Joren was dealing with, for he’d kept some of that secret even from Garrett. 
Garrett would have to decide which clients to take with him and whom to cut
loose.  They all knew him well enough to not get too uptight about the change
in management as long as the service was the same.  Garrett also didn’t worry
much about Joren’s handful of employees who, while loyal, were not incredibly
abstract thinkers and wouldn’t waste time trying to avenge their boss.

Finally,
it was time to bid farewell to this place.  He had taken measures to mask his
identity, plus the practical matter was that the local police would probably
not ask too many questions about why one of the biggest underworld Fixers on
the planet was dead.

It
wasn’t supposed to be this way; nobody had to die
, Garrett thought.  He
would have been happy to keep working for his cousin, to be loyal, to do a good
job, and take what he was given.  But it wasn’t meant to be.

Chapter 2

Ten Years Ago

Garrett
cursed at the text on the monitor in front of him and dropped the datapad on
his desk in resignation.  Apparently, he wasn’t meant to complete this end-of-term
project for his Interstellar Relations class.  Besides, it’s not as though he
planned on traveling the galaxy right away upon graduation.  He’d be perfectly
happy just getting any decent job while he sampled the real world and figured
out what he was
really
going to do with his life.

He lived
alone in a small apartment near the school’s campus, and worked a part time job
as a computer technician at a local company.  He never went ‘home’ during
breaks; there was no home to return to.  His parents had only had one child,
and they were probably best described as people that perhaps didn’t desperately
want kids in the first place.  As soon as he went to university, they’d both
semi-retired, sold most of their belongings, and bought a place aboard one of
those fancy condo starships that cruised endlessly from planet to planet,
hauling retirees across the galaxy in search of good times, recreational games
that weren’t too strenuous, and bland food that wouldn’t give them gas later.

His
friends told him he should be in some sort of public relations or reporting
job, since they all claimed he was such a ‘people person’.  He wasn’t so sure
of that title, though.  He did well enough in social situations, but he
secretly wondered how relaxing it must be for those crazy hermits who mined
asteroids all by themselves, alone on their ships for months at a time.

Oh well,
that wasn’t going to be a problem unless he found a compelling reason to argue
for a Talaran system of economic-controlled government, which his professor
would be arguing against.

Perhaps he
was going about this the wrong way.  Maybe he actually needed to sample the
local economy to fully appreciate the wonders of the Confederation’s system of
government and trade.  Yes, research was needed.

He
retrieved his comm unit from the desktop and tapped the icon for his favorite
contacts.  First up was Cinder, a girl he’d met his first year at the
University and the first person he thought would be willing to help.  Were it
not for the fact that she was engaged to another friend of his, he’d have asked
her out on a date long ago.  In any case, that ship had sailed, and he’d be
happy with her company in whatever form it would take.

Her
attractive face filled the screen when she picked up his call.

“Cinder,”
he began cheerfully, “want to go out drinking with me?”  

They met
at a local college bar called The Beacon.  It was owned and operated by a
retired freighter pilot, and he’d managed to obtain an old airfield landing
signal beacon which spun slowly from its mount on the ceiling.  Garrett and
Cinder found a table on the second level balcony- their favorite location- and
ordered a pair of Brandy Burners.  Their drinks arrived on fire; they snuffed
the flames and took their first sips.

“So,” she
began with a wistful smile, “schoolwork isn’t going well tonight?”

“It’s
going great, actually,” Garrett replied, taking another sip.  “I’m conducting
research on the driving forces behind the Confederation economy and how it
relates to our government’s policies.”

“Your
what
hurts?”

“I’m
drinking, and plan to consume generous amounts before the night is over. 
Tomorrow, I’ll panic and try to write a few pages while hung over.”

“Ah,”
Cinder replied, “it makes more sense when you put it that way.”      

“So what’s
up with you lately?” Garrett asked in return.  He’d noticed something was a bit
off with her tonight; she didn’t seem as cheery as usual.  He also knew from
the grapevine that Cinder and his friend (her fiancée) Arlan, were having a
fight, but this seemed somehow bigger.

She looked
at him, suddenly quiet.  Her eyes darted away, scanned the dimly lit upper
lounge area, and then settled back on him, though now her eyes were moist with
tears.

“I think
Arlan’s seeing someone else,” she blurted suddenly.  She seemed surprised herself,
because she put her hand to her mouth and looked around in shock to see if
anyone else had heard.

Garrett
didn’t know what exactly to say.  Should he try to stick up for Arlan, support
her, downplay it, keep his mouth shut?  He decided on the simplest course of
action, and reached across the table to put his hand lightly on hers. 

“What’s
going on?” he asked.

“It’s a
lot of things,” she said softly, keeping her eyes on the tabletop.  “Things
he’s done, times when I can’t reach him, low key lies I’ve noticed.”  She
finally made eye contact again, and he could tell she was hurt.  “It’s hard to
explain, but I just know something’s going on.”

“I hate to
ask the obvious,” he said cautiously, “but have you talked to him about it?  I
mean, he’s sort of slow, I should know because he’s my friend too, but I’d hope
he would make the time to talk to you about it if you asked him.”

“Yeah, I
asked him,” she replied, taking a long pull of her drink.  “He said it was
nothing.  Had an explanation for everything.”

Garrett
studied her face, the tension, the worry and self doubt.  Cinder was a good
friend, and seeing her like this bothered him deeply.  He’d known Arlan longer
than her, but frankly liked her more.  Calling him a friend might be
overstating things as well; he was more like a mildly abrasive acquaintance. 
Garrett stayed cordial with the man for the same reason he kept social ties
with many people: they didn’t need to know what he really thought of them.  You
never knew when it might come in handy to say you knew someone, so he tried to
not sever relationships unless the offender was a truly awful person.  The
truth was, Garrett knew and got along with tons of people from all different
ways and means, and that was just fine by him. 

If Arlan
was doing something dishonorable to Cinder, Garrett wanted to know about it. 
He decided right then that he would find out if there was any truth to her
fears.  She deserved that much and this was something he knew he could do.

The next
morning, Garrett awoke fresh and ready to get started.  The problem was he
didn’t know what to do.  He’d seen enough holo movies and read enough spy
novels to know what a suave secret agent would do, but he was a university
student with limited funds and resources.  Well, he figured, the first thing he
needed to do was learn Arlan’s schedule. 

Garrett
was a computer nerd of sorts, and knew more than most, though it stopped short
of being a lifestyle.  He could, for example, hack through the university’s
database to download Arlan’s class schedule, address and contact information,
but couldn’t alter it or do anything really fun like change his course load to
all cooking classes. 

Armed with
Arlan’s schedule, he spent the day following him around, taking video from a
distance using an old long lens holocam.  Nothing interesting happened, but
Garrett stepped up his surveillance and followed Arlan off campus as well that
night.  His friend went to dinner with Cinder, who in turn had no idea Garrett
was watching.  They ate, spent some time at a bar, and he escorted her back to
her apartment. 

When Arlan
left Cinder’s apartment, however, he didn’t go home.  He went to the other side
of town, taking a combination of walking paths and public transportation. 
Garrett didn’t actually know if Arlan owned a hovercar, but it would be smart
of him to leave it behind if he was trying to stay low-key lest somebody
recognize it.  Garrett realized he was having fun sneaking around, and had to
remind himself that this was a friend’s real life he was meddling with.  Not
for the first time since he’d started watching Arlan, he wondered if he really
wanted to know what was actually going on.

Arlan
finally came to another bar, not a college hangout but catering to roughly the
same demographic once they’d entered the workforce.  It was a nice place; at
least that’s what Garrett thought by looking at the outside.  Now he
encountered a problem.  He couldn’t go into that bar- it was too small and
Arlan was bound to see him.  He checked his comm unit and saw that it was after
midnight; they couldn’t spend too much time in there, since Arlan had early
classes tomorrow.  The best he could hope for was to catch a glimpse of Arlan
as he left.  Garrett found a convenient sidewalk bench a block down and made
himself comfortable, pretending to be concentrating on the screen of his
datapad but in reality staring right over the top.  If Arlan headed towards
him, Garrett would need to move right away since he wasn’t disguised and it
would most likely be fairly awkward explaining to the man why Garrett was
following him.   

His mind
wandered for a while as he experienced some doubt about what he was doing.  It
was the waiting around that could get to a person, he realized.  If you were
taking action, there wasn’t time to ponder all the things that were going
wrong, had gone wrong, or most likely would soon go wrong.  With these
daydreams floating around, he almost missed Arlan as he left the bar at 1:30
am, beautiful woman on his arm.

Garrett
quickly picked up the zoom lens holocam and held it just over the top of his
datapad, hoping nobody would notice the overt gesture.  Luckily for him, this
time of the night most people were either too tired or drunk to care.  He
finally hit pay dirt when Arlan and the woman turned to each other and kissed
convincingly before parting ways.

Garrett
watched Arlan head for the public transportation center and decided to wait
until the next tram.  He looked at the images on his holocam, at the pretty
face of the young woman with Arlan.  Was she in on this with him, or was she as
much in the dark as Cinder?

The next
day was a fog for Garrett.  He attended the classes he was physically required
to be at, logged in for those that were done via the data net, and didn’t
really pay attention to any of it.  He also avoided Cinder, since he didn’t
want to have to give her half details.  On the off chance there was a
reasonable explanation to Arlan’s actions, Garrett didn’t want to get Cinder
any more upset if it wasn’t necessary.

He’d
already decided on his next course of action.  Arlan had a late class tonight
and would be tied up all evening.  Earlier in the day, Garrett had combed the
data net and found what he was looking for; a Trojan app he had sent to Arlan
that would supposedly allow his comm unit to access real-time drink prices at
various campus bars.  The app was real, but the virus part had been added in by
devious people who Garrett secretly admired.  The app was a bit of social
engineering in that it could only work if it was not just opened, but successfully
installed.  This meant that to get it to work on somebody, the attacker and
victim pretty much had to know each other so that the program wouldn’t
immediately get deleted.  Worst case scenario was that Arlan somehow discovered
the app, upon which Garrett would miraculously discover that his own comm unit
was infected as well and hopefully not look guilty.  The non-virus infested
version was becoming popular around town, so Garrett knew Arlan would at least
try it out.   

The great
part about the virus version of the app was that it secretly repeated its
position, calls, and any text to Garrett’s datapad through anonymous servers. 
He had now cloned Arlan’s comm device, and just had to sit back and watch.  The
problem was he couldn’t get that young woman out of his mind.  Some part of him
had to know if she was in on it, and against his better judgment, he decided
that tonight he could find out.

Garrett
had spent the afternoon studying her picture and mannerisms on his holocam.  He
needed to know for sure that is was her when she made her appearance- if she
made one.  He was hoping she frequented that bar often on her own independent
of her time with Arlan.  

He got to
the bar after the supper hour and had a drink, chatting up the bartender and
leaving a nice tip.  He then wandered about for a while, getting in on some of
the various games that the bar had to offer, winning a few and losing a few,
taking his turns buying as well as receiving drinks.  He made a few new friends
and was careful to not tell people too much about himself, though when he did,
he essentially told the truth- just not all of it.

By ten
thirty, his hopes were low and his credit account was screaming for mercy, and
he considered packing it in.  He decided to swing by the bar for one last stand
when he saw her walk in.

She had
dark hair with a hint of a wave in it which fell to just above her shoulders. 
Her features were sharp and her hazel eyes glimmered with life as she took the
place in.  Garrett noticed that she wasn’t with anyone.  He didn’t know if that
was good, bad, or meant nothing at all.  She appeared comfortable enough in the
bar that he was guessing she lived nearby and was probably a regular. 

She took a
seat at the bar near the end where there were empty spots around her and
ordered a drink.  Apparently she wasn’t here to socialize, at least not just
yet.  Garrett surreptitiously checked his data pad and confirmed that Arlan was
still on campus.  Well, at least she wasn’t here to meet him.  He’d have to
move quickly in case she was expecting company.

He
casually took a seat near her, leaving one open spot between them.  With a
sigh, he settled onto his barstool and got comfortable.  He glanced around and
their eyes met for an instant.  He gave a quick smile and polite nod to her and
then turned to the bartender, who by now knew what Garrett was going to ask
for.  He simply pointed at Garrett, who gave him a thumbs up, and moments later
a Brandy Burner appeared.  Garrett stared at the flames for a while before putting
his hand on top of the glass to snuff it out.