Path of Ranger: Volume 1 (49 page)

“Sweet. One less thing to worry about,” JB replied carelessly. Then he looked at Doc and smiled. “So, what your guys up to? Wanna get wasted?”

“Here he is! A true ranger,” Gibson said.

“Yo, Galuazhee!” JB turned to the alien. “Stop staring at that screen, come with us. You pink fuckers need to relax once in a while.”

Listening to the last JB’s words Gibson wondered why he didn’t try all those years to offer a drink to a namiamifican. And how would that creature drink if it doesn’t have a mouth? Since namiamificans absorb their food through the pores under their legs, it had to be quite a process of getting alcohol there.

The next morning, Gibson woke up having a terrible headache. He had overslept through the start of his shift. And the memories from the last evening brought him lots of embarrassment. To his astonishment, he found the ranger in the training court, working out at full capacity. JB looked amazingly fresh as if he hadn’t drunk a single drop the night before. Gibson ‘swam’ into the room, glowing with his painful expression.

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you asleep?” the scientist pushed out, hardly.

He took a seat on the bench next to the treadmill, where JB was jogging.

“Have you forgotten, Doc? I don’t sleep…” JB answered continuing to run on the blue strings of that force field. “Not that often…”

“Good for you. Well, I sleep…” Doc stretched, yawning.

“Yeah… I can see that…”

JB looked at the pillow mark pressed into the Doc’s cheek. Then he stopped jogging. The counter shown the distance ‘159 kilometers.’ The mutant took two silver cans out of the fridge to toss one of them to Gibson.

“Yo! Catch!”

“Ranger Juice,” Mark read the label. “I don’t re-com-mend this,” he made another long yawn.

“And I in-si-i-st!” JB teased him.

The conversation was moved to the dining room, where the comrades went for breakfast. Just a few sips of that ‘non-recommended’ drink made Mark feel much better. The hangover symptoms passed. Moreover, the scientist felt much energized that he wanted to run, jump around, and do anything just not to stay put.

“You have a quite a pet here, Doc,” JB said watching Galuazhee, who was passing by.

“It’s amazing how those things' brains work. I know him for so many years and he still keeps surprising me. Sometimes I wonder if they see us this way. Or they just toy around us, as if we were some silly children… Who would have thought of this the day we arrived?” Gibson said dreamily.

As a ranger, JB didn’t give that much admiration to other kinds. They were more like entertainment for him. Something, it wouldn’t let him take the allies seriously. But Gibson’s last words made him remember the past.

“How long ago did you see ours?” JB asked.

“It has been some time…” the scientist said. “Most of them were sent to the province. Skyman, Ellison, Wash and some of the students joined the armed forces. Many of them have died, you’ve probably heard about that?”

“Yeah, I have,” JB nodded.

“The ones who left. Some of them keep in touch. But many have disappeared since Atlantis.” The scientist looked at JB’s expression, full of expectation. He got what the ranger wanted to know. “You probably want to know about Mia most of all?”

“Most of all, yeah.”

“I don’t know much,” Gibson continued. “Ellison turned to me for help once. It happened when Mia dropped out of the academy for the first time. She asked me to pull some strings to help Mia get accepted back. And when Ellison was killed in action, Mia stopped studying once again. She ran away from Venus. I’ve heard that she joined one of the pirate clans.”

“Yeah, Caran-Ken’s clan,” JB confirmed.

“So, you did know?” Mark wondered. “Why didn’t you bring her back then?”

“The girl is a real character. She couldn’t be stopped by force. It would make things much worse,” the ranger supposed. “A few solid guys from the clan, who owed me some favors, watched over her. But a few months ago she disappeared. It troubles me a little.”

“What are you going to do about that? Will you look for her?”

JB froze in thoughtful calmness for a second.

“No. Not now, at least,” he said. “Mia is nineteen now, she’s grown and responsible for herself. She can make it on her own. But you do let me know if you discover something about her, though.”

“Are you serious now?” Gibson laughed. “JB, it’s our third contact for the last five years. I’m sure it would be much easier to find Mia than to reach you.”

“Touché,” JB smiled back and made a sip. “If you need to get in touch with me, you post a message at the ‘Universe of Warcraft’ forum in ‘Secret Dudes’ Messages’ section.”

“‘Secret Dudes’ Messages’? Really?” Gibson said skeptically. “Is that your fancy way of secret communication?”

“Cool, right?!”

“How should I encrypt it?”

“You shouldn’t. Just write openly.”

“Okay, as you wish,” Doc shrugged. “I’ll post messages of top security value at the platform opened for twelve-year olds.”

“And for rangers.”

“And for grown-ups with the minds of twelve-year olds,” Mark added. Then he looked at the clock. “Let’s catch up with the schedule now, what do you say? We’re only three hours late.”

The first item on the schedule was a weapons exposition. Dr. Galuazhee wasn’t needed anymore, JB trusted with his equipment there exclusively to Gibson.

“This is all yours,” Gibson waved his hand over a desktop, saying those words proudly, as one would present something incredibly huge and valued.

But all there lay there were a vest and a hand phaser. Not getting the drift JB put that look on Gibson, the one full of confusion, with a bit of contempt, perhaps.

“That’s it?”

“You don’t know what it is!” Mark got the comrade’s mood but wasn’t offended at all. In fact, he was flattered by the little mysteries for others in his inventions. “This vest is not a regular armor vest. This is ‘forcefield electromagnetic damage proof vest.’” Listening to that nonsense, the ranger had already doubts about his earlier decision of giving Doc that Ranger Juice can. “The main purpose of this device is to stop the metal bullets before it hits you with its forcefield. Even if the bullet reaches you, the impact won’t be high enough to harm you. It also has a ‘void’ mode. When it’s on, the bullets will pass by, curving around you. You better not to use it in a group combat since it will hit the ones behind you.”

“Uhuh… Tell me, Doc, would you? How much time did you spend on making this thing?”

The ranger didn’t look that impressed.

“Well… I had this idea a long time ago, back in the twenty-first century, actually. But there were no such batteries yet. You know…” JB nodded. “But, if evaluating the process of production itself. I think two months approximately,” Mark said thinking carefully. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing… It's just, I’m trying to figure out if all of you have nothing to do here since you have time to make these useless things!” Doc’s eyes filled up with offence against that claim. “Why do I need protection against firearm weapons?! Nobody uses ballistic guns anymore! It’s an era of energy weapons now, yo!”

“Hm… Fair point,” Doc got caught in thinking. “We can make another series of similar, but adjusted ideas. Put energy collectors there, maybe. With anti-blast plates…”

“Show me something else,” JB rushed to break Mark’s brainstorm.

“A phaser!” Doc said out loud proudly again. “Do you still have that gibsonium crystal that I’ve given you?” The ranger nodded in reply. “It’s on you, right?”

“Always.”

The big guy’s hand gently touched on that old worn leather sack, which hung on the belt.

“The miners from Procyon brought me a new superconductor that they had discovered. We haven’t studied this element fully yet. Still, using it, I have made a contact piece to this phaser’s battery. When you learn how to use the crystal’s power, you will be able to recharge the phaser by your own abilities.”

Despite the little usefulness of those inventions, JB accepted the equipment. He didn’t want to offend Doc by being smart-ass all the time. Moreover, JB could relate to that. As a scientist, Gibson was a prisoner of his unique mind and imagination. And it was sort of JB’s job as a friend to embrace that in Mark. Soon they said their goodbyes and the ranger left the station.

Two days on that planet was a rather short mission indeed. Just one last assignment was left for Bridgers to finish. This one was from the military. The beneficiary was the ‘Indigo’ station of the Sun system. The mission was to find a lost agent on Earth. JB had to investigate what had happened to the agent and to rescue him if possible. If not, then delivery of the agent’s personal things was the next priority. Nothing else was said in the mission description, nothing about the agent himself or about the task he was up to. The location remained unrevealed yet. JB would be given that on arrival to Earth.

Another day passed. The ranger was on a straight line to the Sun. He had just about thirty-six hours of flight ahead of him. Everything was going fine. Just as the mutant had a first chance to relax after several sleepless weeks, three ships appeared on the radar. They flew at high speed and headed straight for him. It was quite unusual for pilots to keep that close a distance, especially when space was free like that.

The unknown vessels kept on speeding, several more minutes and they would crash over the ranger’s transport. Suddenly, they spread out and circled JB from different directions. One of the aggressors flew on the same level in front of JB and took an offensive position. He fired two blasts at the ranger right after to reveal their true intentions.  A force screen had blocked the attack, but it shook the vessel pretty good anyway. JB got woken up at once and rushed to the pilot’s seat. There were three ships on the radar around him, but no alert had warned him beforehand. After checking the equipment’s state, JB removed the titanium screen off the windshield and gradually dropped the speed until the full stop.

Now they were face to face with each other.

“Hey, bro! You’re on our territory! It’s time to pay a toll!” a male voice sounded from the speaker.

“No shit? Are you serious?” the ranger said arrogantly.

“You’re a lucky one, actually. I'm in a good spirit today, so let’s call it ten thousand galls and you can move on.”

“Oh, I have an offer for you. You shove ya threats up ya ass, take ya girlfriends and fuck off.”

“Are you retarded, or do you just not know how to count? There are three of us. You’re alone.”

“Three idiots is a disadvantage, I’d say.”

“So should I just pop you up and pick up what’s left of your ship? Sounds good to me. Get me my money!”

“Pirates…” JB stretched out. “There are three mistakes.”

“What mistakes, ranger?”

“You three are the mistakes!” JB grew a sly smirk.

Not listening further, the pirate released a massive charge from the plasma cannon at his target. The ranger’s vessel moved down and sideways, getting right under the enemy’s ship. Then he pulled up the back side of his machine to push the pirate forward, where his comrades were.

“Free advice: learn how to shoot before you attack a ranger!”

The corsairs couldn’t even get around what had happened when all three of them were at gunpoint. Not saying much more, JB activated four rocket launchers to hit all of them instantly. The weapon sockets opened up, the launcher spinners went spinning, but it seemed that there was not a single rocket onboard.

It bummed JB quite a bit. The maintenance personnel had to recharge the weapons when he visited Gibson’s base. The ranger had to overestimate their competence. His second of advantage passed. The pirates reacted and went spreading around once again.

“I have to give it to you, ranger. You almost got me. Almost…” a satisfied smirk of the bandit’s appeared on the screen again. “Kill him!”

All four ships launched instantly. JB flew straight on his course to gain some distance, the others chased him. The first phaser charges flashed along his side illuminators. He didn’t even try to wiggle much, knowing that such hits were nothing for his force screen to handle. But, suddenly, the two charges hit the ship and the alert went off. A board panel showed the damage on the ship’s armor. Now it was time to get nervous.

JB turn to the control panel to run a diagnostic test on the vessel’s systems. Meanwhile, he tried to do the best he could to avoid the shooting. The mutant used every maneuver he could remember from the book, and it was helping for a while. But those pirates weren’t newbies. They knew what they were doing, and soon the old school tricks wouldn’t be enough.

The diagnostic showed malfunctions in weaponry, protection and auto piloting systems.

“Da fuck?” came out of JB when he read the results.

“What do you say, ranger?! Don’t you wish you would have taken that offer?” the pirate asked.

“I’m not talking to you…”

The corsair saw as JB was rushing between the panels, not paying any attention to that conversation or the steering wheel.