Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 3: Vengeance (2 page)

“What did I do now?” I asked as the carbon slid back into its reptile-skin holster. “Sorry,
guess I’m just jumpy today.”

“Quick too,” Tanya said with a measuring look, “but that’s not why I’m here. I want to know where all those Kievor-credits came from
that are in your account if you didn’t sell my jewelry!” She demanded. “I don’t care how much you got for them, they weren’t yours to sell.” If she had a second thought about the fact that I had drawn on her I couldn’t see it in her face. What I saw in her face was her wanting to know where my credits had come from if I hadn’t sold her jewelry and I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“What Kievor-credits?” I said, because for a certainty I didn’t have many.

“I don’t have any idea how you got so much for those pieces. I don’t care that you got so much for them. What I do care about is getting every one of them back, Marc, and I know what each piece looks like down to the minutest detail!” With that said Tanya turned on her heel and stormed from the Bridge.

“You stole Tanya’s jewelry!” Bren said from his station. “You’re despicable.”

“Why are you here?” I asked. I meant the Bridge antagonizing me and he knew it.

“Something crazy going on Marc.” Bren said. “I think we should depart.”

“Depart the Trade Station!” I demanded as I queried the Kievor for my account balance. The sum that appeared on my screen was absolutely impossible. “We won’t be departing
any
time soon.” I said. There was obviously some error here and I was going to spend as many of those errors as I could before the accounting mix-up was fixed. “I’m going aboard the Station.” I said as I rose. To hell with the oddities, I’d get drunk and maybe kill a few jewelry festooned reptiles to try to appease Tanya, but these credits had not come from Tanya’s jewels- there were enough credits in my account to fill Last Chance with the rarest and most expensive jewelry in the Universe- and I was going to get to the spending of it.

Chapter 4

Last Chance powering up and lifting from the deck of the dock was about as discernible to me as my own face in a mirror but I was sitting on the toilet when it occurred and by the time I got to the Bridge we were in warp.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” I swore at Bren, though it was already far
too late.

“There are about thirty Katon Destroyers right behind us.” Bren said cheerfully as I landed in my pilot’s seat with the intention of bringing us out of warp and turning us right back around- then removing his and everyone’s clearance to navigation.
I
was going back to the Station and
I
meant to have a good time spending those credits- and I was going to take a good long time about doing it. Then Bren’s words sank in and I realized fully what he had done. There would be no going back to the Station now. We wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near any of the local Stations- not with the Katons fully alerted. I sank back in my seat, defeated.

“Why?” I demanded of both Bren and the heartless Universe.

“Yes why?” Tanya said from the hatchway. “I would especially like to know.”

“I know what happened to us
.” Bren said. “We had to leave the Station while we were still able. I’m remembering everything and when the Kievor realized their wipes weren’t working…”

“Everything about what?” Tanya growled
interrupting, not at all amused and no more wanting to hear one of Bren’s drawn out explanations than I, but mostly still very much wanting her jewels back. At least now the attention was off me.

“About you and Marc being Alartaw.” Bren said. “
I’m remembering it all. Why everyone’s memories are screwed up this morning. You and Marc were Alartaw but the rest of us weren’t, we were never changed into Alartaw so we probably just got standard mind-wipes. Mine didn’t work. I remember everything. First I started seeing mathematical equations I knew I’d never seen before. Unbelievable ways to combine atoms to…”

“In layman’s terms
!” I interrupted his meaningless diatribe this time. I had no idea whatsoever what the hell he was talking about but his words were stirring strange chords within my memories. Strange hints at things I couldn’t dredge up and the effort of trying to do so beginning to give me a headache. By this point in this day I was sure it was only going to get worse.

“You
made a deal with the Kievor…” Bren began and an hour later and a pounding headache that six cups of hot-jolt still hadn’t fixed had us convinced- but not by his words alone. All of us were on the Bridge by then and listening to what he had to say, but it was the science he was talking about and showing us on a screen that caught my and everyone’s interest- not that any of us knew what the hell he was showing us other than that it was entirely new; “I can build the computer which will give us trans-metal. I can recreate every bit of the Alartaw technology I learned during our stay and it’s at exactly the same technological level as the Kievor. It may be the very pinnacle of scientific possibility! I just need the materials.” Bren said, after which I could think of little else, and I didn’t mean whatever the
pinnacle of scientific possibility
meant- I meant the computer which would turn Last Chance into a trans-metal anti-gravity powered ship. There was little else I could think of after hearing that.

“That’s really helpful.” Tanya said scornfully. “What yard is going to take us in with thirty Katon Destroyers following us?”

“Saying all of this
is
true,” I said to Bren and ignoring Tanya, “and we really were the Emperor and Empress of these Alartaw, why wouldn’t the Kievor just have killed us? Hell, they even paid us. Doesn’t make sense!”

“Kievor honesty.” Manuel said. “They lived up to their end of the deal. I guess their word is the one thing the
Kievor won’t tread upon.”

“The deal is finished now though.” Melanie said. “That’s why the Katons are after us- the Kievor have informed on us.”

“I know it wasn’t you.” I told Melanie with a mocking smile I just couldn’t stop from slipping onto my face. “I hadn’t rebuffed you yet.” I said. To that response I got the glinty look she had given me earlier, except no mind control behind it this time.

“We’ll never be able to return to a Kievor Trade Station. None of us!” Janice said. “The deal’s concluded and I bet it burned their asses that they had to keep their word but it must be some kind of code they live by and won’t break. I honestly can’t believe they did it but I
know
if we put ourselves in their hooves again they’ll kill us for sure.”

“We’ll never be able to return to a Kievor Trade Station and all those Kievor credits.” Is what I lamented.

“I grabbed a few as a contingency.” Bren said, picking up a duffel-bag I hadn’t noticed sitting on the deck near his feet. He picked it up and opened it; it was full of Kievor credit vouchers, millions worth.

“How in the hell did you ge
t into my account?” I demanded.

“It was part of the arrangement.” Bren said with a smile at my
demand
, everything now clear in his mind, especially the years he had spent studying Alartaw technology. “You left standing orders with the Kievor to give us full access to your account. I got them right after you and Tanya left and I’ve been carrying them since.”

“If Marc and I were the Emperor and Empress of these Alartaw, this race which is just as technological as the Kievor, how did we end up back in Kievor hooves and where are these Alartaw?” Tanya asked, I think that question at the top of everyone’s mind at this point.

‘Our ship was damaged. We were in battle and took a massive hit- as usual you were leading the attack when where we should have been was in the vanguard. That’s where the Commander is supposed to Command from!” Bren gave me a scowl at this but these were things I didn’t remember and only smiled at him in return. He could make up anything at this point and I was just supposed to believe it! Bren went on; “I was knocked unconscious. I remember that much. There was a blinding white explosion and then nothing more, but the wreckage of our ship must have been pulled aboard a Kievor Trade Station and the Kievor kept their word. What a surprise it must have been to find us aboard the flagship but I seriously doubt they realized you were the Emperor of the Alartaw. No matter how honest they are I could not imagine them keeping their word if they had figured that out. Then they returned all of us to our original lives as they had promised they would.”

“How
was
the war going?” Tanya asked. I smiled at her as well, knowing her underlying thought. She wouldn’t be the Empress of an Empire that no longer existed.

“The war had been an uphill battle ever since the destruction of the Alartaw worlds, but somehow Brune kept pulling us through,” Bren answered, “tho
ugh I’ll never understand how.”

Chapter 5

Bren needed the raw materials to build his super-computer and I needed Bren to have them. Though I still couldn’t remember any of the details of this misadventure and probably never would, Bren
did
remember and that was all that mattered. It could only be some strange Cosmic burp that he was recalling these memories at all- and actually defeating a Kievor mind-wipe in the process- but the how or whys simply didn’t matter. Apparently his studies of
Alartaw
technology had been burned indelibly into his brain and the way Bren’s brain worked those mathematical equations just had to get out. They had simply refused to be contained and burst the bubble of his mind-wipe. Incredible when you considered the Kievor’s technology, but I believed Bren could do as he said. So I needed to lose thirty Destroyers and get Bren to a place where we could procure the raw materials we needed. The three fifty-kiloton nuclear missiles would quickly and efficiently eliminate three of the Katon ships but that would still leave twenty-eight. Nor could I think of any place where we might be welcome/not reported- leaving enemies at every turn does have its drawbacks and so now I’ll admit I was in a bit of a quandary.

“The Katons seem to have rebuilt their Navy.” Tanya said smugly as she came on the Bridge to find me searching through star-maps on the main screen. I was pretty much unwelcome everywhere I could think to go- it’s not my fault I generally get t
he upper-hand which also generally leaves me in the
bad
graces of the other parties involved, but I was sure I could find a friend or two when I really needed one. So find a friend and lose thirty Destroyers. Didn’t sound too terribly difficult, or so I thought at the time.

“I see you’re including Federation Space in your search.” Tanya said after only a moment. Humanity had been busy while we were gone and what couldn’t be done with force apparently
had been done through diplomacy. The human race had come together into one democratic Federation.

“You
are
observant.” I said as I searched.

“The Katons will be sure to have issued an APB for a certain ship christened Last Chance and an individual named Marc Deveroux- dead or alive would be my guess.” Tanya said self-contentedly as she tapped a finger on her screen. “Have you forgotten
why
the Katons are chasing us? Here’s the whole story I pulled from the Ultra-net if you’d like to catch up on your exploits.” A small smile now curled the corner of her lip as she watched me absorb it- for the second time, because somehow it had slipped all of our minds. Thorough as she always was she’d needed to remember why we were being chased. Odd it hadn’t seemed important to me- the ruthless and powerful were always chasing me and they usually had good reason so I hadn’t bothered myself with the why of it. Now I remembered the mine and ore-freighter and certain of the events which followed, but that was where things got fuzzy for me. I supposed that now that it was out in the open I would continue to recollect more until I remembered everything, but all that really mattered was that I was alive and as long as I was alive I wanted to keep it that way and there was really little else of concern. Since I was always getting
in
trouble getting myself out of trouble was what I had become best at.

“What are you so content about?” I demanded as I scrubbed the parameters for the search. The box to enter coordinates lay stubbornly open, my fingers refusing to type them in. Couldn’t go into Federation Space at all I pondered because no false identity beacon would fool an AI’s recognition software when we were probably at the very top of the Most Wanted list. I wondered how I could have let something as significant as that slip my mind. Of course the Katon government would have reported Last Chance as an armed pirate and the Federation Cruisers would shoot first and ask questions later- it was always simpler that way and saved them paperwork- not to mention the thirty Katon Destroyers behind us and how many more taking up the pursuit. My fingers and brain stuck for a moment I just stared at my screen. I could always attack Tanya; “You’re in the same boat I am.”

“Turns out my jewels really
aren’t
missing. At least not this set,” Tanya said with a bigger smile, “and you’re the one who has to figure out how to get us out of this, so why shouldn’t I be content.”

“Maybe because I can’t think of a way out just now.” I said.