Authors: David Welch
“Fine,” Vahl sighed. Jones began to walk away when the lieutenant shouted, “Please tell the commodore that if his son actually paid attention he wouldn’t be dead! The boy was a screw-up!”
Jones paused and then continued without looking back. Vahl turned back to the view, dropping the sheet next to his empty beer bottle. He picked up the bottle, seeing if he had missed any.
“Need another?” a vaguely familiar voice asked.
He turned his head and stared at a bikini bottom that molded itself to nicely rounded hips. A see-through wrap clung to them, teasing him. His eyes trailed up, seeing his bed-mate from the night before. Chestnut hair fell in a “U” shape around her face, framing it nicely. Rex noticed, for what may have been the first time, that she had brown eyes. Trailing down, he saw two drinks in her hands, both with little umbrellas.
“Hubby hasn’t shown up yet?” he asked.
“Says ‘he’ll never make partner if he skips out on a case this big,’” she mimicked.
“Screwing his secretary?”
“Boss, I think,” she replied. “He always had a thing for older women.”
Rex patted his lap eagerly.
“Well, have a seat then,” he replied.
She smirked, “My daughter gets back from the movie in two hours. You really want to spend it looking at the view?”
He couldn’t really argue with that logic. He just prayed it would be worth the subpoena.
Only teachers and diplomats and people who aren’t any fun at parties call it the “Non-Aligned Quarter.” Everybody calls it the “Chaos Quarter” because that’s what it is! It’s the Wild West on steroids, or rather it’s what people imagine the west of nineteenth-century America to be, combined with the “glorious” age of pirates, the Chinese warring states period, and any other hectic period of Earth’s past.
Ironically it is this way because the region of space now known as the Chaos Quarter was the number one destination of people fleeing the Commonwealth. Too many people tried to build nations here, leading to such cut-throat competition that no centralization has occurred. No state has grown to dominance. Instead, in this roughly circular region of space, maybe 120 light-years across, depending on your definition, we get tiny states battling tooth-and-nail with each other. We get states that are lucky to control an entire planet, with few strong enough to rule a whole system. We get bands of pirates, warlords, religious fanatics, and basically every crazy you can think of fighting to protect an asteroid, a dead moon, or even an empty patch of space where they like to park their ships. As one would expect in such a disorganized place, technology lags, and life lives up to its reputation of being “…nasty, brutish, and short.”
Ironically it was those who settled on the periphery of this space that had the room and freedom to develop. They became the more stable civilizations of explored space, their nations forming two sweeping arcs, like archipelagos, that surround the Quarter. They were no better or worse than residents of the Quarter, no saner or crazier; they just didn’t have to spend every minute fighting to stay alive. But lest we get too carried away with the negatives of the Quarter, we must remember this: there are over one hundred thousand star systems within the Chaos Quarter. And for every pirate roving space looking for plunder, there are a dozen everyday people, living on a planet or a structure colony, toiling away just like the rest of us…
-Lecture given to students at New Michigan Institute of Technology by Professor Alejandro Ross, NMIT Recorded Lecture Series—Volume XXVIII, 2498
Rex gazed lazily at the world below. The locals called it Igbo. Both the world and its solar system went by that name. This particular world was home to the
Kingdom
of Igbo. There were two planets between it and the system’s star, both dead rocks, neither apparently controlled by this mighty “kingdom.”
The outer gas giants and their moons were owned by a motley collection of petty tyrants, pirates, pettier tyrants, and some curiously violent Buddhist cultists. Every system seemed to have those, though they weren’t always Buddhist. Heck, half of the zealot faiths hiding out in the sticks had never been heard of on Earth. So far the best bunch he’d come across had believed that Zeus had hidden a ring of magic power on their moon to keep it safe from the Great Demon of the Dreamtime. They hadn’t found said ring yet, but they had to protect the moon from those who would misuse the ring’s mighty powers. Zeus would accept nothing less. He’d left them to their devices, idly wondering where he could buy whatever it was they were smoking.
The huge asteroid belt, at a billion miles from the sun, was a vast battle zone of competing miners, with corporations, nations, independent diggers, and
more
pirates slugging it out. The Igbo system, like every other system he’d visited so far, was the Quarter in microcosm: factions, chaos, and widespread violence.
He’d jumped in about four hundred million miles from the sun, some three hundred million miles from the planet. Fortunately for him the part of the system he’d jumped into had been pretty empty. Some of the angry Buddhists had shown up in their homemade junkers, looked at his weapons for a bit, and then gone off to look for easier prey. He’d gotten to the planet without blasting or bribing anybody.
His ship’s computer flashed data on the screen before him, breaking him from his gaze. Sitting on the bridge of his ship, the screen gave the impression that he was looking out a window at the world below. In reality it was a giant screen hooked to external cameras, giving him the view he would have seen
had
there actually been a giant window in front of him. Nobody would ever build a ship with such a window though, as it would be a perfect target for anybody trying to blast you out of existence. His computer flashed the data in translucent green letters right over the view. A female voice with an Australian accent spoke the words to him. Six months in this bucket and he still expected the computer to say “g’day mate” at a moment’s notice.
“
Planet of Igbo. Two detected space stations. Various satellites in orbit. No defensive satellites detected. Locally produced fighter craft sixty thousand miles starboard, ten thousand miles dorsal. Oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Estimated 64 percent ocean. Eleven continents noted. Numerous large islands. No natural satellites. 101 percent Earth-sized...Incoming transmission. Open channel?
”
“Go ahead,” he spoke to the empty bridge.
“—ention approaching vessel, please transmit your beacon code and identification. I repeat, attention approaching—” a voiced blared over his comm.
“I hear ya,” he replied. “Beacon code 2-7-9-Alpha-Alpha-Zulu-Hotel-3. This is the
Long Haul
out of Boundary. Requesting permission to land and trade.”
“What are you currently carrying?” the voice continued.
“Pulse acceleration coils, two dozen Elys missiles, ten thousand rounds ammo and a few hundred sniper-rifles. Heard your king has been hiring on new mercs, figure he might want to fit them out.”
“Our king does not hire mercenaries; he hires soldiers.”
“Semantics. These guns come from the Commonwealth, from the military arsenals. I put them in a market-place and they’ll be gone in ten minutes,
if
your lord and master doesn’t want them.”
The line was quiet and staticky for a moment.
“You have permission to land at the Biafara Spaceport. Its position is being fed to your computers. You will be met by a representative of the local lord.”
“Thanks, gentlemen,” he replied. The coordinates for the spaceport flashed on his screen.
“Take it in for me,” he spoke to his computer. The auto-pilot kicked on, moving toward a point in the southern hemisphere. A large continent filled his viewscreen.
“
Temperate to semi-tropical. Non-mountainous. Broken forest and extensive farm-lands. Six noticeable metropolitan areas.
”
“Get an air temperature and local time as soon as we hit atmo,” he spoke and then got to his feet.
He moved up the bridge. It looked like a small amphitheatre, with only two levels. The bottom level held his pilot’s console and the gunner’s position, which was empty. The upper level held three seats, one for communications, one for monitoring the ship’s condition, and one for scanning. All three were empty. Usually, on a ship this outdated, that meant that the vessel couldn’t be effectively operated. However, this particular junker had been decked out with the latest in Commonwealth military computer technology, giving him a degree of automation unimagined in the Chaos Quarter. It was still a pain-in-the-ass to fly, he was always on the bridge, and when he wasn’t, the damn computer was asking him to return. But it was possible.
Six months and still no crew
, he thought as he entered the main corridor. He had meant to hire on people long before now, but these parts didn’t offer up many choice picks. In the Quarter, being able to fly,
at all
, would get you a job. Being able to operate weapons systems made you a valued commodity. Engineers and mechanics were worth a fat man’s weight in gold. Years of training cadets back at the academy didn’t help, either. He had helped shape the best flyers in the Commonwealth into something better, and with such a high standard, the dregs of the Quarter didn’t really stand much of a chance.
He made his way to his cabin. He knew if he didn’t want to exhaust himself out here he’d need to get some people on. He couldn’t go two days without paying a toll to pass through somebody’s space or fighting off some cobbled-together pirate fighter that wanted his cargo. With his ship’s tech, it was fairly easy to do, but he knew eventually he’d run into somebody bigger and badder than himself. If he was slumped over his console asleep when that day came, things wouldn’t end well.
’
Course at this rate, they won’t end well anyway
, he sulked as he approached his closet. He opened it, revealing no clothing. The floor and the hamper were for clothing. The closet was for weaponry.
He pulled off his shirt and reached for an armored shirt. It worked on the same principle as his ship’s armor: non-Newtonian fluids. When struck, the fluids rearranged their molecular structure in a microsecond, becoming hard almost instantaneously. His shirt, made of thick cotton impregnated with these fluids, could withstand pretty much anything short of a fifty cal. It still hurt like a bitch when he got shot, but it didn’t kill him. Break a few ribs, leave some bruises, sure. But no death.
He pulled the shirt over his chest and reached for a grey leather duster. Slipping into that, he glanced at his weapons rack, set against the back wall. On it rested his own fifty cal sniper rifle. It was a tried and true design that went back centuries. While energy weapons may have revolutionized combat in space, they had never been successfully scaled down to personal arms. The weapons he had weren’t much different than the weapons that had been used for the last five centuries. They still threw slugs; they just threw them electromagnetically instead of explosively.
Next to the sniper rifle sat an assault rifle, and beside that an automatic shot-gun. Below these larger guns lay a pair of hand-guns: .45 semi-automatics with fifteen-shot magazines. He slipped then into the inside pockets of his coat, along with a half-dozen spare clips. He grabbed a bowie knife and hid it in his left pants pocket. Armed for a pleasant night on the town, he cinched his jacket half-closed, but left it unbuttoned. No use going for your gun if you have to stop and take off your coat first.
The ship began to shake gently.
“
Entering atmosphere. 5:32 pm local time. Calculations show the planet is on a 26-hour clock. Estimated air temperature at surface is 52F
.”
“Brisk,” he mumbled, moving back to the bridge.
The great black void was gone, replaced by the blue skies of a living world. The tone of the ship went from a barely audible
whir
to a run-of-the-mill
hum
as the engines shifted from matter/anti-matter elimination to age-old nuclear thermal rockets. It was considered good form to do that in an atmosphere. People below generally didn’t take kindly to their pretty worlds being hosed with neutron radiation, an unfortunate byproduct of matter/anti-matter drives. In space it didn’t much matter. Everything was radiation up there. Down here, high energy neutron emissions could really ruin your day.
Continuing on,
Long Haul
pierced effortlessly through wispy grey clouds, then fluffy white ones. It rapidly approached a mid-sized city, made up of low clusters of buildings, surrounded by patchy farm land. Near the west end of the city was a broad concrete pad, maybe a mile across. Circular patterns had been painted on it. This was the spaceport he was heading for. As it grew larger in his viewscreen, another hail came though.
“Please land on Pad-6, location is being transmitted,” a bored voice spoke. Whoever was speaking cut the line before Rex could thank him. The computer adjusted the course, moving to the east end of the spaceport. The ship slowed as it came over a circular concrete pad, stopping and hovering there. It slowly descended the last hundred feet vertically. A familiar
thunk
and a light jolt ran through the ship, telling Rex that he was down.
He left his room, heading down the main corridor. He passed several empty crew cabins and then descended three steps. This brought him past the shower room and sick bay. The hallway widened into a common room, flanked by two more cabins and a pair of storage areas. The common area ended at a half-wall that opened into the ship’s small kitchen. On either side of the kitchen, corridors ran back to the aft of the ship. He ducked into one, passing the thick-walled reactor compartment before entering the cargo bay.
“Open the doors,” he ordered.
The computer complied. Two massive doors, each thirty feet high and almost as wide, opened downward. They touched the tarmac, forming ramps that vehicles could drive up and down. Rex descended a narrow staircase to the floor of the cargo bay.