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

“Something will come to you. They can’t get us in warp, dear.” Tanya said, but we were both looking at one another after she said it. After she said
dear
.

“I don’t care if Bren said we were married in this fantasy tale of his, there’ll be none of that on this ship.” I said. “I have my policies and they’re staying.” Despite Tanya’s stunning beauty I would rather bed a monstrous black widow, I thought, because then at least I would know when it was coming and wouldn’t have to suffer through the waiting for it.

“Who said anything about wanting
you
!” Tanya said with real indignation because she had certainly not meant it that way and clearly won the point. I kept my mouth shut for the moment while she smiled another of her contented smiles, because she was absolutely right. Where in the hell were we supposed to go when we were wanted in human space while on the other hand returning to a Kievor Trade Station carried the very real likelihood of instantaneous vaporization! Suddenly the Universe seemed a very
enclosed
place.

“I wonder how long they’ll follow us?” I asked instead of continuing our argument, but Tanya seemed to have other ideas about that.

“That’s your plan!” Tanya said with a scowl and menacing look. “Wait for them to stop following us? They’ll follow us forever you idiot. You shake their asses and you shake them now! I’m the Empress of the Alartaw and I want my Throne back!” Tanya glared at me a moment longer then turned and stormed from the Bridge.

I could only stare.

Chapter 6

I wasn’t sure how Tanya expected me to restore her to her Thrown… and the jewelry which was always behind her
every motivation, much less figure out how to shake our pursuit. I didn’t usually have a problem shaking a tail. The disproportionate size of Last Chance’s huge fusion engine in ratio to her overall mass and the military-grade specs of her engineering meaning I was able to put her through maneuvers which most other ships couldn’t follow or would tear them apart if they attempted it. Drop out of warp on a full lateral burn and then jump right back into warp and Last Chance was leaving a trail most ships couldn’t follow without looping back around in real-space to reorient on the warp point. Confuse the trail enough and I usually lost them but I had never had so many hounds behind me. It didn’t matter what trick I tried, what strategy I employed, they had enough ships to scent down every false-trail I created and they were always there behind us, just waiting for us to drop out so they could pounce.

“I’m unhappy.” Tanya said as she studied the warp-scan screen. She made a little moue with her mouth as she said it.

“I can’t understand how anyone can see anything in that image.” I said. I seemed to be the only one who couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing when I looked into the blurry warp-scan imager.  “All I see is a bunch of swirling colors. I don’t think they’re even back there.” I added, and though it was true that I had never been able to see much in the warp-scan imager this was really about veering off from the thing I could see coming, though it went to an extent far beyond what I was expecting.

“That's because you're not the type with a high creativity level.” Bren said, interjecting himself into the conversation to criticize me, everyone doing the same at every possible opportunity since our departure and no one remembering that it was Bren who had begun this misadventure in the first place- at least this small leg of it. I may have been the Captain and owner of this ship but I’d be laughed out of it if I tried ordering them to stop picking on me. At the moment I couldn't find a friendly face anywhere I might turn, and there weren’t all that many places to turn.

“There are only ten directly behind us now.” Tanya said. “I think those are good odds.”

“Good odds for what?” I said,
of course seeing her madness immediately.

“What did you say?” Bren demanded, slow to catch on to some things even though so quick at others.

“Ten to one is good odds.” Tanya said clearly and with a calm look between us. It was just the three of us on the Bridge.

“Those are Destroyers.” Bren said standing up abruptly also obviously realizing where Tanya would be going with this and trying to glare at me to get me to object. It didn’t work for two reasons; one was that Bren couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper sack much less pose me a threat and the other was that the stare was unnecessary.

“Not a chance.” I told Tanya as I rose and headed out of the Bridge, but what I hadn’t taken into account when I changed the security protocols was that I left out anything about running the ship while it was already operational- leaving that out simply wasn’t possible. I saw a flash from the periphery of my vision as I walked towards the Bridge hatchway and by the time I turned my head Tanya was in the pilot’s seat and strapping herself in. “Son-of-a-bitch!” I swore as I jumped for a seat and grabbed for a harness.

“You bitch!” Bren swore as he sat back down, knowing there was absolutely nothing
he
could do about it if I was stymied- but what was I supposed to do? Drag her bodily from the pilot’s seat? It wouldn’t work and for some strange odd reason I had the impression that Bren and I had been the only ones
out of the loop
on these plans though I was sure Tanya and the rest would be counting on me to pilot us out of this once they had engineered us into it.

“For any who are interested we are about to depart warp.” Tanya announced calmly over com. “We have been running for three hundred and sixty-four days and I refuse to run for an entire year.”

“We’re all set back here.” Janice came back over com. “Did you tell Marc beforehand?”

“He knows now.” Manuel laughed out over com.

“Does he know about the asteroid-field yet?” Melanie asked sweetly.

“He knows now.” Manuel laughed out again, everyone laughing out loud over com at me, but I didn’t get the joke- they were all apparently willing to put their lives at stake on the weak presumption that I would somehow be able to get us all out of this.

“Yes what asteroid-field,
dear
?” I asked, but the dear wasn’t an endearment.

“It’s a big one.” Tanya said as she dropped us out of warp. I hated warp transition more than I hated any of these people- at the moment at least- and that was saying a lot.

“You might want to get over here Marc.” Tanya said as she unclipped her harness and stood up, all the while holding the control yoke at full throttle. Under what felt like about six gees I got up and staggered to my pilot’s seat while Tanya stood there as if unaffected, and as I got myself into my seat and harnessed the proximity alarms began ringing of incoming warp signatures.

“I think we have company.” Tanya said innocently as I took the yoke and she made her way to her station. Our three missiles and single fixed photon cannon weren’t going to be much match against those Destroyers and their numerous independently tracking photon cannons- each ship would have several- but as promised Tanya had dumped us right on the outskirts of a massive meteor field and soon I was maneuvering us into it.

“In this plan of yours,” Bren said to Tanya, “did you take into account that we’re going to be trapped
inside
the meteor field?”

“Of course.” Tanya said.

“What was your plan for getting us out of it?” Bren now inquired of Tanya, as if that were the big punch line- I already knew what was coming and was surprised Bren missed it.

“I don’t have a plan. It’s up to Marc to get us out.” Tanya said as her fingers twitched over the controls for the nuclear missiles. “He's the Captain.”

“Don’t you dare!” I swore at her as Bren slowly made sense of Tanya’s madness.

“They’ll just surround the meteor field and blast it until they get to us!” Bren nearly exploded. “We’re completely trapped.”

“Better ask Marc what he has planned.” Tanya told Bren with a sweet smile. “It's not really my realm of expertise.”

Chapter 7

Tanya’s meteor-field had the mass of several heavy stars according to scan and would eventually coalesce into a new star-system in a million years or so- if the Katons didn’t vaporize all of it first. It was spread out over several parsecs in a roughly spherical pattern and Tanya had dropped us out right on its fringe. From our vantage on the very edge of the cloud it was as if the meteor-field and dust-cloud around it were growing and engulfing the remainder of the Universe. It entirely dwarfed us and there didn’t seem to be any end to it- the dust-cloud on one side and the rest of the Universe on the other. A growing Cosmic monster already of immense proportion.

I
put Last Chance into a viscous lateral burn directly into the dust-cloud and plunged us into the gloom and obscurity of the thick dust. The Katons came out of warp at our exact exit-point not caring that we might have dallied just long enough to shove a nuke or three up their asses. I glanced back again at Tanya to make sure she wasn’t doing just that. She smiled at me maliciously as her fingers twitched over the controls but I wasn’t too worried about her wasting those very valuable weapons- if I didn’t pretend she got under my skin sometimes that would only cause her to redouble her efforts. She was very careful when it came to her life and I knew she was as sure as I that before this was over we might very well have
need
of those nukes and her antics were only to antagonize.

There were numerous of them right behind us all right, however many Tanya had counted. The proximity alarm was ringing of multiple threats.
I wasn’t free at that moment for such luxuries as counting though did the numbers really matter- ten or thirty of them what was the difference when they knew we only had three nukes. A deadly game of Russian-roulette for the first of the Katon Destroyers out of warp but that’s how badly they wanted to kill me and it warmed my heart to know that at least
someone
really cared about me that much. I was forced into immediate evasive maneuvers as they began taking pot-shots at us in the concealing stellar-dust, but that’s all they were because they were gone from our scan which meant we were gone from theirs. For the moment we had escaped.

The continuing evasive maneuvers were necessary to avoid the larger debris as we plunged farth
er into the asteroid-field. Katon photon-beams several times flashed closely in the darkness of the dust and debris, lighting the eerie spacescape in muted pinks and purples, but we were traveling farther into the field and soon even the random shots vanished far behind us. They had lost their prey but only for the moment. As Bren had said, we were trapped inside.

“I think Bren made a goo
d point.” I said as I turned helm over to the auto-pilot and turned to look at Tanya. “Just how in the hell
are
we going to get out of here?”

“You’re the hotshot pilot.” Tanya said with another of her smiles as she rose to depart. “You figure it out.”

“I may have it figured out.” Bren said.

“Oh.” I said uninterestedly as Tanya departed and I watched the auto-pilot slowly glide Last Chance through the random movements of boulders roughly the size of Last Chance to mountain-siz
ed chunks it took long moments to navigate around. Although if anything I was watching the rear scan screen quite a bit more closely even though with the obscuring debris there was nothing to see. Though I doubted they would try to close with Last Chance inside the field, where the real battle for the massive Destroyers would be in avoiding random accidental destruction in the close confines of the constantly changing spacescape but I just couldn’t seem to keep my eyes away from that scan screen expecting them to follow us despite the lunacy of the move. It
was
the Katons we were talking about, after all.

I was uninterested in Bren’s opinion because unlike his mathematical abilities- at which he is genius- his piloting skills and the reaction-time necessary
to survive as a pilot simply weren’t there. I could imagine no valuable input from Bren concerning the act of piloting. It has always been my opinion that humans are all created mostly equal, Bren and I- all humans- as equally talented each in our own way and each person’s strength making up where another is weak making the whole stronger- but Bren and I were on opposite sides of the graph. No input from Bren could ever be helpful for the act of piloting.

“As a matter of fact I do believe I do.” Bren said
a while later as his fingers continued to fly over his keyboard and complicated three-dimensional blueprints to form themselves on his screen. I went from watching out of the corner of my eye to finally when I could stand the suspense no more getting up and going back to see what he was doing. Bren went on as I looked over his shoulder, as if there had been no interlude; “Our machine shop is too small for large production. It was only designed for small-parts fabrication but I might be able to come up with a little something to even the odds.”

“That little something,” I said of the blueprint being built on Bren’s screen, “has the distinct look of a weapon.”

“A very powerful weapon!” Bren agreed as he looked up for a moment to smile what I would call his
mad-scientist
smile. Bren was now completely in his element and his nose turned immediately back to his screen. These were the times when a guy like me needed someone who was on the other side of the graph and why a guy like me would fight to the death to protect not only Bren but the entire crew. They each did their part and together we were an invincible team. At least we had been so far and I wasn’t the type to fix things that weren’t broken just because individually they may have been a little skewed. Each and every one of us unquestionably misfits- each one of us skewed in our own particular way- but together we were the crew which had never been defeated.