Arrangements were made for a meeting between the Governors of twenty-six of the wealthier colonies in the Omega sector. The largest of the colonies, located on the planet Banton, was selected for its central and somewhat secure location. The Bantons took the security of their people seriously. Pirate activity in and around Banton was almost nonexistent.
I stood at a podium to begin what was billed as the Conference of Trade and Security. "Fellow Omegans, I am the new Emperor of the Talisans. As many of you have heard, the prior Talisan Emperor, Goonrag, fell from power recently."
The crowd chuckled.
I continued, "I am his replacement. I asked each of you here today for the purpose of forming a free trade alliance, backed by a security alliance.
"As we all know, the security forces being run by Governor Marcos on SS241 are corrupt. The freely elected Governor there was captured and executed by Marcos and the Talisans. I now control the Talisans, and we need to take back control of that security station. I am here today to ask for your support. With Marcos removed from power, and a fair Governor on SS241, I believe the Omega sector can return to a time of prosperity that it has not seen since the early days of the AMP.
"With a fair and honest security force, a force that will answer to your colonies, I believe we can elicit better trade deals with the rest of the New Alliance, bringing Omega to a comfortable, achievable level of power and wealth."
I continued with my pitch for another twenty minutes before the discussions began. The Governors wanted assurances. I offered what I could. I had the Talisan warships at my call, waiting for my orders. No other force in the Omega sector could rival the power that I wielded.
After a heated round of discussions, Garrett pulled me aside. "I don’t get why you are going through all this. You have the Talisan fleet; you could overrun SS241 on your own. What are you trying to achieve here?"
I gestured towards the Governors. "If we just kick Marcos out, we leave a power vacuum. There are at least half a dozen Governors here who would attempt power grabs of their own. If I can get their backing in this endeavor, it may be possible to have them all cooperate with each other for the betterment of everyone. If we can set up a framework for that to happen, we can head to Alpha while they are peacefully resolving their problems."
Garrett shook his head. "Hmm."
I replied, "What?"
Garrett crossed his arms as he leaned, looking back at the crowd of Governors. "You just continue to amaze me, that’s all. You are like this whirlwind that comes into a situation, and instead of things being blow apart, the dirt is vacuumed up and cleaned away. You would have made a great member of the Council of Governance back in the AMP days."
I sighed. "I don’t know about that. So far, I haven’t seen any enthusiastic support for my proposals. It shouldn’t be that hard or that remarkable for people to just do what’s right. What we are doing here should be the norm of what’s expected from everyone, not just the occasional citizen."
Garrett chuckled as he continued to shake his head. "That whole modesty thing just adds to it. Now, go get your agreements before I make your head swell up with too many compliments."
As I walked back towards the podium, I shook the hands of several Governors. My eye was caught by a stoic look from one of the Governors as I passed by his location. The Governor of the Valen colony, a close ally of Emperor Goonrag and a willing member in the slave trade, was following me with his eyes.
After passing his position, I was startled by a scream. As I turned back to see what was happening, a knife came swinging toward my shoulder. I ducked as I turned. The knife, an extremely sharp dagger, sliced into the thick skin of my upper arm, not quite penetrating the outer layers, but leaving a deep gouge.
Garrett reacted with a shot from his blaster. The Governor of Valen exploded, spraying blood, bone, and organs across half a dozen other Governors nearby. The assailant’s upper torso and head dropped to the floor, an evil grin still expressed on his face.
Garrett raced to my side. "Are you OK?"
I looked at my shoulder. "The cut is deep, but not fully through. It will heal."
As Garrett looked over the wound, the room began to slowly spin.
Garrett spoke. "You don’t look so good. We better get you to a doctor."
I raised an unsteady hand. "I will be fine."
As I turned to continue toward the podium, I began to lose my balance. I fell face forward onto the floor. As I rolled over on my side, the voices in the room quieted as the lights grew dim. I was falling unconscious.
Two days passed before my eyes again opened. Garrett was sitting in the chair at the end of a bed where I lay, talking with a Banton doctor.
The doctor pointed. "Your friend is waking."
Garrett turned back towards me with a smile. "Great! Thanks for your help, Doc."
The doctor nodded as he turned to leave the room.
Garrett pulled his chair closer. "I thought we had lost you. The blade the Valen used was covered with a deadly poison. The only reason you are alive is because of that thick Grunta skin you have, and the docs here have an antidote. Usually, though, the victim is long dead before they can make use of it."
I glanced down at the bandage on my shoulder. "The bandage is not necessary. My skin will heal well without it."
Garrett laughed. "Well, not exactly. After having such a tough time injecting the antidote, the doctors took a look at that cut. There was enough poison still in it to kill half the people in that room. They basically had to neutralize it with a high-powered laser. That arm may be out of service for a few weeks yet. They aren’t familiar with Grunta physiology, so they just did what they knew."
I nodded as I looked over the bandage. "I would ask that you thank them for me."
Garrett sat back in his chair. "No need to thank them. They were happy to do it. I think everyone else in that room was so taken aback by that attempt that they all signed the agreement you had outlined. They want Governor Marcos, and the criminal element that runs with him, gone. If anything, the Valen did you a favor."
I looked toward the door of the room.
Garrett continued, "Don’t get any ideas of leaving. Doc says they have to wait a few days for that burn to heal before they can check for further existence of the poison. If there is any left, when that injured skin makes it to the surface, you would be sloughing off the poison, putting others at risk. It only takes a tiny amount of that stuff to kill."
I looked into the hallway at two Talisan guards that were standing just outside my door. "I suppose they are here to prevent me from leaving?"
Garrett laughed. "Those two? You are their Emperor. They would happily do anything you ask. No, they are out there to prevent any further attempts on your life. You know, had the Valen been successful, he would have become the new Emperor. If he had then been arrested, a single word from him would have brought war to this planet. And my guess would be that the Valen would not be very friendly with his attacks."
I replied, "I will remain here until the doctors release me. If the other Governors signed the agreement, we have accomplished what we came for. Perhaps we should use the next few days to plan our confrontation with Marcos."
Garrett sat down. "I say we just march in there with a Talisan armada and arrest him."
I shook my head. "I believe that would trigger a response by the Saltons. They can’t have a security station taken over, even if it is being run illegally. What we need is a way to convince Marcos to leave on his own. Once he is away from the station, we are free to arrest him for the criminal that he is. If the Saltons get involved, they would want to investigate, and that could take years, with everyone just trying to protect themselves from any incrimination."
Garrett put his arms up behind his head as he leaned back. "The only thing Marcos cares about is his treasure; maybe if we steal all or part of that, he will come out looking for it."
I nodded. "Perhaps. I would be interested in looking over the other AMP artifacts that he possesses."
Garrett smiled. "He keeps all of that in a single room. Our problem is that we don’t have anyone on that station that we can trust. We need access, and most of those in a position of access are his personal goons."
I thought for a moment before my reply. "How about this. We storm in with a few hundred Feldon volunteers. Go right for his treasure stash, steal what we want, and then leave. He won’t report that to the Saltons. If he doesn’t come out looking for it, we go back in for more of it. We will take it back to Effica and let the word out that it’s being kept there."
Garrett replied, "We will have to blast our way in there. He has his henchmen stationed all around those treasure rooms."
Garrett held up his hand. "We have another issue as well. If you want Feldon volunteers for this mission, I would suggest we step up the timetable for them to be relocated from Telfor. That in itself would probably generate a few hundred volunteers."
The following week was spent planning our pillaging raid on SS241. My shoulder injury was well on the way to a full recovery. The Banton doctors had declared the wound to be poison-free. A trip to Telfor had a group of two hundred volunteers who were eager to get their own retribution on Governor Marcos. His alliance with the prior Talisan Emperor had led to the expansion of the slave trade in Omega.
A group of fighters had been selected and was receiving training inside the bunk room of a prior mine. When word came in that the
Heap
was landing just outside, I walked out to greet Go. I was not expecting the ship that landed.
A lengthened warship with thick hull plating and an array of multi-blaster turrets was parked just in front of me.
Go stepped out through the gravity wall in the cargo bay. "Well, what do you think?"
I replied, "If that is the
Heap
, it doesn’t look like the same ship. What do you have, half a dozen cannon turrets on that hull?"
Go smiled. "We have eight. It offers a full 360 degrees of coverage by at least three cannons at once. The armor is thicker than anything in this sector, and she’s fast too. Come check it out!"
I followed Go up through the gravity wall and into the cargo hold. "This looks a lot bigger than before. Is it longer?"
Go replied, "Yes Sir! We added an extra fifty meters’ length to her. The Talisans had a decent nav computer and an actual battle computer. She has been updated with those as well. There is enough bunk room for a few hundred soldiers as well. Garrett sent me the plans for the attack on Marcos. I added the bunks so you could take this ship in on the raid. It currently has no transponder, so as far as any administrators will know on that station, it’s just a pirate vessel."
I looked over the cockpit and smiled as I inspected at the new equipment. "I can’t believe you were able to pull this off in such a short time."
Go grinned. "It’s not all that hard when you have been given a complete shipbuilding dock to do whatever you want with. I hoped to have you present it to Jallis and Layda, but I think this mission is an even more fitting use for it. This ship may become a thing of legend in the Feldons’ history. Imagine, the
Heap
is the ship that freed a whole sector, and I was there!"
I smiled as I placed my hand on Go’s shoulder. "I’m sorry to say that you won’t be going along on this adventure. I will be placing you as second in command of the Talisan Empire. Should anything happen to me, you will be responsible for straightening this sector out."
Go scratched his chin. "I should be upset with that, but for some reason I’m not. I’ll do as you direct, Mr. Beutcher. I’ll say one thing about the prior Emperor. He was a good manager. The offices under your control are well staffed, and they are run very efficiently. It’s strange. Here we have a species with such uncivilized behavior as slave trading, and yet they are well organized.
"Goonrag was a micromanager, but only with the things immediately around him. That’s why the mines were run so poorly. He wasn’t there to organize them. It’s a shame he had no morals. He would have been a good leader in this sector."
The planning for the raid moved along smoothly. One hundred sixty-four Feldons trained with blaster rifles for two solid Telfor days. The hallways on SS241 were displayed on a holo-screen, and each phase of the assault was gone over in fine detail. Everyone knew their tasks.
As we closed on SS241, Garrett hacked into the station surveillance cameras with the
Jess
’s hardware. The feeds were patched through to my arm pad, giving us a forward look at whatever resistance the Governor’s men would throw in our way.
The
Heap
pulled into the space dock registered as a Banton ship. Four armed guards approached as the level of the gravity wall dropped. The Feldons began to pour out. Two guards perished in the initial exchange of ion fire. The remaining two quickly surrendered their weapons.
We moved in a single column, at a slow run, weaving our way to the stairwell that would take us up from the forty-first level to the fifth. Two additional guards were dispatched before our troop of raiders reached the target floor. It was the floor where Governor Marcos kept his most prized possessions, the AMP artifacts.
As we moved down the hall towards the stash, three Human guards, mercenary guards, opened fire. The compressed training session given to the Feldons was no match for the experienced thugs the Governor had employed. Five Feldon fighters lost their lives before Garrett managed a shot that took out the first of the guards.
I yelled down the hall, "Look, we have the firepower and the manpower to overrun your position. Surrender your arms and you will remain unharmed!"
One of the guards yelled back, "Hahahaha! You think we are scared of a bunch of Feldons? Haha! Bring it on!"
I began firing repeated bolts at the wall just behind their position as Garrett sprinted down the hall. As he reached the corner behind which the guards were taking cover, he dove onto the floor, sliding out in full view of his targets. Two ion bolts exploded in the chests of the two men as they attempted to counter the threat. As the explosions settled, Garrett waved his arm that all was clear.