With the considerable profits from Julian’s gambling venture and the funds now coming in from the technology sales, The Bastards were in good financial shape for the first time in recent memory. The new drives were almost completed when Julian, Deacon, Natasha, and Guy left for the Hades Rising system, three months, six days, and four transports away.
Hades Rising was dangerously close to the rebel-infested Fringe Worlds for such a fantastically expensive cooperate venture as the one established here by Lockhard, but it was one of the most resource wealthy systems yet discovered. Especially on Hades Rising II, a baron, creator-covered vacuum world a little smaller then New Antigua. A successful mining outpost had already been established there by ConCo years earlier but the entire operation was bought-out by Lockhard, the leading designer and manufacturer of starships in the known galaxy.
Over the last twelve years they had constructed Lockhard City, the most massive space station and one of the largest ship construction facilities ever conceived. It would eventually be home to five million permanent residents, though there were less then two at the moment, and be able to hold twice that many in cramped but livable conditions. It was here that the new Iceni Queen was born and it was here they would purchase the last few things they needed before they began harassing the traffic coming in and out. Billy and Mad Jack would bring the Queen and War Hammer near by to meet-up with them in two weeks, giving them plenty of time to do their business, make a contact or two and do some reconnaissance. They had also, with their new cash flow, decided to hang-on to the two captured freighters and made repairs on them. The crew situation proved to be no obstacle as skilled recruits were being turned away within a day of the postings. Fame was already paying dividends for Julian and the Bastards.
Julian gave Natasha a scornful look as he suddenly realized it had been at least an hour since the last. No amount of depraved barnyard animal make-up sex was ever going to erase the stain of her sin but he certainly wasn’t going to stop her from trying either. Noticing, Natasha attempted to look shamed and not laugh. She honestly felt bad but there was a limit to how seriously she was willing to take this.
They were just then able to see Lockhard City through the portholes of their shuttle compartment. There was a buzz throughout the party over the undeniably impressive structure.
“Look at the size of that thing,” Guy remarked, seeing it for the first time in person.
“Cut the chatter,” Deacon interrupted. “Everyone get into your disguises.”
“You heard him,” Julian said to Natasha with a light elbow, “Put on one of your other faces.”
“Ha, ha,” Natasha said unimpressed. “You are wery clever for Rifter.”
“Why thank you,” Julian said. “You’re well-bathed for a European.”
They all made sure their false finger tips and contact lenses were in place as Deacon instructed. The fake identities and the permits had cost a small fortune in of themselves and Deacon wasn’t going to let any mistakes be made. If they were found-out in this snake pit, they were done for. Pirates captured alive by the Feds where in for a fate worse then the inevitable death that followed, but worse still was falling into the hands of cooperate security casing-out their establishments and trying to buy the very weapons they intended to rob them with later.
They were here in the guise of representatives from a fictitious, but fully licenced mercenary group. They had monits to spend so they didn’t expect too much trouble from Lockhard sales personal, which was fortunate because the veil of even a well-established front company might collapse under close scrutiny.
The busy docking terminal where the smaller passenger shuttles landed was impressive by itself, large as any planet-side equivalent and bigger then most. Certainly cleaner, but it was still young. They were met at the customs desk by a tall lanky fellow who identified himself as Clark, first or last name unspecified. He wore a suit that was too small for him but in fairness they probably didn’t make a great deal of clothing to fit his easily two-hundred and six centimeter frame.
“May I ask which of you is Mister . . . ” he glanced down at his hand computer, “Mister Iremon?”
“Right here, Clark,” Deacon said grabbing the man’s hand firmly. “Good to meet you, Clark. We’d love to get strait to it but we really need to get to our hotel and unpack first.”
“Oh, of course, sir,” Clark beamed back, “I’m here to take you there first thing and I’ll return in the morning to bring you to the hanger floor to inspect your merchandise before we go over the contracts and such.”
He then escorted them to the security area where they underwent fingerprint and retinal scans. Each was quietly relieved in turn as they were passed without incident. Their bags were gone through yet again and they were all asked to take off their shoes. A strange ritual found in customs terminals throughout the colonized worlds that perplexed Julian. What do they think we have fucking bombs in our shoes? Julian asked himself, but of corse that was absurd. It wasn’t as if a truly determined person could be stopped from smuggling anything if they put a little effort into it, Julian had walked right through with a ceramic knife and a plastic body pistol, but if that’s what made people feel better . . .
Clark then ushered them over to a waiting private tube car which moved at great speed without any noticeable inertia. Natasha remarked on it and Clark’s eyes lit-up with eagerness to boast of the station’s technological prowess.
“Oh, indeed, yes,” he began. “The integrated inertial/gravity field of the station is active on all the cars and lifts. You’ll find we have the largest and most advanced public transit system of any city in the galaxy. In addition we are the only station to have artificial gravity on anything close to this scale, more than eighty-five percent of the facility in fact, the rest is mostly construction-related and doesn’t require it. And this is also the most efficient system devised, with each room in the station adjustable from point twenty-five to two full G’s at the turn of a dial.”
Natasha grabbed Julian by the sleeve and tugged enthusiastically. “Moscow Ballet,” she said like an excited child, looking through a list of events on her portable. He glanced over, lowered his head and relented with a mute nod. He then scowled at Deacon’s whipping gesture.
To Deacon’s surprise Julian began to question Clark extensively about the station, its ship production capabilities and the massive indoor hydroponic farms that provided fresh air for the station and food for the entire system. He showed almost too much interest and it made Deacon nervous. He put it out of his mind and began reviewing their itinerary for the next few days on his portable. He’d feel slightly less paranoid after a good night’s sleep he told himself when he found there was no shaking the seed of trouble from his mind.
Their hotel, the Starry Night Inn, boasted over four-hundred rooms on ten levels and was hospital clean and obnoxiously comfortable. Anything would have been received as a palace after more then four months of constant travel of course. It was named for a famous old era painting the Lockhard Corporation owned which was displayed behind the main desk. Julian and Natasha studied it as they waiting for their rooms to be prepped. A towering black spire rising above a village, the sky awash in swirling light which made the mountains in the distance glow with a yellow hue.
“Whoever painted this was clearly insane,” Julian noted out loud.
“I think iz beautiful,” Natasha said, iz like star nursery in Cat’s Eye Nebula.”
They all slept late and indeed may have slept the whole day away had Clark not shown up promptly at ten in the morning, station time, to rouse them. He was very apologetic about doing so, cursing himself his for stupidity, not realizing they would be so tired and perhaps he should have arranged to meet later or the following day . . . It became sufficiently annoying after a time that Julian wished the tube cars could be manually controlled, allowing him to crash the thing and kill them all.
At last they arrived in the showroom set aside for them near the thirty-second level docking bay. “Here they are, all beautiful craft I’m sure you’ll agree,” Clark said with no small amount of pride. “Frankly your getting an exceptional deal on these as they were a late ship to the FDF who had to cancel the order due to the loss of the ship they were slated for. The Charlemagne, perhaps you heard of the incident on the news service uploads,” he inquired but the assembled party just looked at each-other shook their heads.
“We’ve been on assignment at Arclight for the last few months,” Deacon explained.
“Oh, it was most tragic,” Clark assured them. “The most advanced craft to ever come out of this facility, or any other if I may be so bold. Attacked and destroyed by huge rebel fleet near fives months back. Utterly tragic for both the crew and the good folks here who poured so much love into her.”
“Sounds terrible,” Natasha said with sympathy.
“Indeed, and these are frankly an unpleasant reminder that we’ll all be glad to see go,” Clark lamented. “Oh, not that they aren’t all in top shape mind you,” he qualified at once.
“My only concern,” Deacon said looking over the four Rapier fighters and the corvette, “Is the Broadsword. I see it’s been extensively modified for use with some sort of docking system. Not entirely suited to our needs.”
“Oh, I assure you she’s no less effective then her sister ships and we are knocking ten percent off the price as it is . . . ” Clark tried to sound firm but it came out rather flat.
“Twenty,” Julian said, making Clark looked at him as though he had just throttled a puppy in front of a small child.
“Sir . . . ” he pleaded. Guy and Natasha turned and walked in the opposite direction, as if conferring on something but the truth was neither felt they could keep a strait face for much longer. Clark regarded them closely and worried he was about to lose the sale and his commission. He had earned points with his supervisor when he informed him they had found a buyer for the launched-craft which sat idol in this holding bay for almost half a year as a constant reminder of the troubles with FDF Fleet Command who claimed that faulty equipment design had lead to the Charlemagne’s humiliating loss at Darwin VIII. Such claims were baseless of course, even slanderous the company might say, but they had received orders from the board to keep quiet on this matter. An unfortunate aspect of life in the cooperate world, Clark thought, You screw so many people with such frequency that you’re bound to get yourself from time to time. No matter to me though, twenty off would get some eyes rolling upstairs but they’ll be glad in the end to just be rid of them.
“You are shrewd negotiators, Mr. Iremon,” Clark relented and shook Deacon’s hand a little weakly. “If your merc company fights anything like you shop for gear we should hire you to end these rebel and pirate raids once and for all.” With that they went to Clark’s office and signed the necessary papers which took about an hour all told. Deacon thought his hand would be crippled for life with all the signatures and initials that were squeezed out of it in that brief meeting. They arranged for the five vessels to be shipped-out with haste to their non-existent headquarters on Regina V. Deacon had planned the timing very carefully so that the ships would be berthed for another week in the Dante system, rarely visited by patrol craft because there was nothing much there to steal as a rule. It would be a simple matter for Billy to snatch the corvette and fighters, then be gone long before word of it reached Lockhard City. Once he did, Clark and his superiors would figure out quickly what had happened but in all likelihood the theft would be covered-up. Lockhard would not want this humiliating screw-up reaching cooperate, or worse yet, the FDF council.
Their primary business taken care of, the four of them now had time to devote to other tasks. Guy and Natasha took charge of making inroads with some of the better placed staff and discreetly spread some money around to arrange for the more choice cargo manifests and their escort strengths to find their way to an automated system on Isabella II. A Fringe World, it was outside Federation patrol routes but close enough to assure rebel warships rarely ventured there either. They had made plans to use the system’s third and most remote gas giant, Isabella IX. It had a suitable moon with a methane atmosphere and a side that never faced the ringed giant so they would be well protected from both radiation and prying eyes. A large series of caves also provided a location for storing cargo until a local contact could be made to sell the less valuable plunder that wasn’t worth lugging back to the Rift with them.
Deacon set himself to the study of commerce patterns and the regularly scheduled shipments that came in and out of Hades Rising. Julian made frequent attempts to get him to come-out carousing with him as the station had many fine restaurants, taverns, brothels and casinos. Deacon was hot on the trail of a rather extensive smuggling operation that was already in place, however, and always polity refused, preferring to burry himself in research.
For his part, Julian had become quite fascinated by the station itself and arranged to take all the tours offered, some of them repeatedly. Deacon had asked about the intensity of his interest but didn’t inquire further when Julian of-handedly dismissed it as boredom. He was up to something of course. Deacon was sure of that for two reasons: Firstly, touristy pursuits were well outside the norm for Julian, even if he found a subject interesting, and second because he was always up to something. He had also made contacts with a fair number of people in security and at the FDF offices, using his assumed persona of the mysterious and romantic mercenary captain to amass a fair wealth of information on the station’s defenses. That worried Deacon more then anything. That nagging warning continued to sound in his head but he had what information he was going to get for the moment, at least out of Julian.
On their last night in Lockhard City Julian stayed-up late watching archived news reports about himself, The Bastards, and the Iceni Queen which by now half the galaxy knew was indeed in one piece and hiding in the Riftward Marches. Or so at least everyone believed, Billy would be waiting for them on Isabella IX’s shrouded moon even now, at least he had better be.
Most notable of the files, however, was the reissued coverage of the “Double Socialite Murders” of three and a half decades ago. The interest in his activities, and the dearth of substantive accounts there of, had reopened that old shit with a vengeance. There was even a panel show discussing he and his mother as text book examples of criminal genetics, a subject that always seems to be popular in police states where five percent of the population owns pretty much everything and everyone. Julian told himself that as parasites they had little alternative then to try and justify their sense of inherent superiority, but it still burned like a slow fuse in his mind. He had enough after that one, turned-off the sound and studied the file photo of his mother paused on the screen. It was the first and only image taken of her after being bonded and processed at the “Domestics Academy for Girls” on Delta Pavonis Prime. She was young, still in her teens, but her eyes smoldered with defiance even then.
He had inquired about a tour of Acheron’s Rock, the place where all went south for the McAllisters, but was informed it was now a restricted research facility. Further investigation revealed it was a nuclear weapons plant but little else. Just as well, he thought as he lay down on the couch to sleep. He left Natasha alone in bed, not wanting anyone near him just then. To his knowledge his mother had never spoken of it to Deacon and Natasha knew better then to breach the subject unless he did first. That wasn’t going to happen. I’ll show them all one day, he thought to himself with a wry laugh. I’ll show them all what lowborn scum can do when properly agitated.
* * *
Boadicea McAllister punched some quick holes in the inflatable raft that spirited her from the New York Archology and began to burry it far up the beach where it would hopefully not be seen again, at least not until she was off this forsaken planet in any case. She felt a faint twinge as she disposed of the little craft, having spent the longest night of her life on it. She jokingly named it the “Iceni Queen” after her namesake for good luck and it seemed the ancient warrior queen had indeed watched over her thus far.
She indulged in a brief spat of kicking herself over losing her temper and rushing things before they were ready. It had all been set in advanced and she was here a full two days early. That was two days for the authorities to find her before Jack and his new friends were ready, assuming of corse they could even do so now with all the scrutiny this case was certain to generate. She had just butchered one of the little darlings of the Core Worlds and they were no doubt already lamenting the great loss to humanity on all the news services and saying wonderful things about her. She didn’t care though. There was no waiting and she would rather end up dead then scrub that woman’s back with blood of another who’s only real crime was probably no worse then her own; not having. It was quite the task to have these days of corse. What with people like Mistress Lizzy still breathing. They would have to be dealt with at a later date however.
To her name she had enough food to last a couple of days, some fresh water (though not enough), a bag of Mistress Lizzy’s best jewelry and the butcher’s knife she had killed her with. She intended to hold on to that last artifact ‘till the end of her days. It represented her new birth as a free woman, no matter how short that life may yet prove to be.
She watched the sun turn the sky a strange ochre color that was beautiful in its own way, that is if you could divorce yourself from the knowledge it was caused by the hideous pollution that everyone not housed in one of the great archologies had to breathe. Earth was infamous for the genetic ills that afflicted its under classes due to untold centuries of industry running freely without restraint. Not a moment of pause to consider the headlong rush into oblivion humanity was on. Of course today many scholars dismissed such worries as baseless since humans now lived in more than a hundred solar systems and were effectively “unkillable.” She remembered her mother once laughing over such a commentary as they watched a news service report on the subject. “All things die in the end and are ultimately of no consequence, she had said, that’s what makes the whole thing worthwhile. That’s freedom, which sadly can be scary.”
Of a less sagely tone, but perhaps more on point at that moment, her mother also used to say, “Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends upon what you put into it.” She took a quick survey of the coast and got to her feet. She hadn’t even noticed until now but she was soaked and shivering, and at night it grew cold outside.
She must be close to two months now, a shame she couldn’t castrate Mistress’s little brother in the bargain. She shuddered to imagine what would have happened once she found out. She’d have been sterilized to be sure, maybe much worse. It’s strange, she thought making her way inland, I still call her “mistress” in my mind. Me who just rammed a razor-sharp piece of steel up her cooch. And she had herself a good long laugh after years without and decided to keep and love the baby for spite. And least to start with, she’d work on the rest from there. “Well,” she said to herself out loud, “sometimes the only way forward is headlong.” And with that she was on her way to a strange and mysterious land called New Jersey.
She thought of names for hours, mainly to distract herself from the fact that she was wet, miserable, nauseous, and wanted in connection to a double homicide. Finally a ride, she climbed into the cargo hauler and held her bag on her lap. The driver was an old man who smiled thinly and nodded politely then turned his attention back to the road. She smiled too, and tried to look out the window without it being obvious she was worried about being seen by enforcers. He glanced at her once or twice but paid her no attention otherwise and had nothing to say.
At length, nervousness loosened her tongue and she spoke to the quiet old man. “Are you heading anywhere near a place called Jefferson?”
“I could take you there, Miss McAllister, but they’ll be looking for you at the docks if that’s what your thinking.” He just continued driving as though nothing had happened and it took her a moment to recover.
“You know who I am?” she asked in a tight breath that the old man could hardly hear.
“I do, Miss McAllister,” he said, “Likely most will, your face is all over the uploads. And not a ship’ll be leaving from any place around here without a visual inspection for a while I’d guess.” It was about then that the full magnitude of what she had done truly settled on her and she thought she could feel her shoulders strain against the weight of it. “Are you running blind or do you have somewhere to go?” he asked.
“What?” she looked as though she’d just been awakened from a dream. “Oh, I need to find my brother. I was supposed to meet him at the dockyard there in a few days, he has a ship.”
“You’ll never make it on an outgoing vessel without being ID’d,” he told her. A silence fell on the two of them for the better of half an hour before he spoke again. “You can stay at my house for a few days, out of sight. When your brother’s ship comes in I’ll contact him and arrangements can be made for them to pick you up elsewhere, out of the way.”
She looked at the old man hard for a few minutes, wondering. It could be a trick, she realized, he could be trying to get me to let my guard down while he contacts the authorities. Or he could be some sick fucking weirdo . . . She felt more alone at that moment then she ever had before, and she had felt alone more then her share. The thing about my face being everywhere must obviously be true though, I need to trust someone.
“Thank you,” she said at last, realizing there were no sufficient words for what was being risked for her, a stranger. She laughed in an embarrassed tone. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Julian,” he told her.
As soon as she was safely aboard the Pit Fiend and being spirited to freedom, she began spinning from air an elaborate mythology to tell her child when the need arose, casting the dashing young Julian as the happy father, tragically killed freeing her from captivity. Sorry, Julian, she thought with a laugh. She decided then that she rather liked laughing, though she had never done much of it. Even before her family was destroyed by their unfortunate proximity to ConCo, she was always “overly serious” by her mother’s yardstick, though she herself preferred “studious.”
Well, see what that got you, she thought and laughed yet again. Then aloud, “Here and now I declare that not only will I laugh all the time, but the more inappropriate the situation the better! And that because I wish it.”
* * *
Of course, when it came to it that night, sitting on the edge of his bed she told him the truth, explaining that this way, if he ever did meet his father he’d know what to do. He didn’t understand what she had meant by that at the time, but he was getting on in years now, and always had a fine kitchen cleaver in his possession. An ornate letter “H” on the handle. This having become something of a personal tradition, “Vendetta,” as he called her, sat in his bag even now. Unable to sleep that night, he sat up and wrote.
There is no free will, only gravity;
Boundless, soulless, relentless gravity.
The cold-hard compulsion of chemistry.
All things are forgone; pointless, closed and fixed.
All will end lightless, scattered through the void
Or in the bellies of the great dragons
Upon which all of the galaxies wheel.
All was planned in the musings of atoms,
All of us doomed before time’s inception;
All questions are answered simply: Because...
Sightless we scramble about in the dark,
Inertia’s shadow ever gaining ground.
Blotting-out the sun, then the stars in turn,
And bleeding the heat from our sweat-soaked skins
Which shiver and quake for want of a flame.
How easy it is, insulated by
A few feet of earth once entropy comes,
Hunting like a shark through the depths of time.
Hear them bay, the dogs of the Wild Hunt,
Rabid with pleasure we may never know. |
Submission Name: Iceni Queen 5--Cities In The Sky
