Authors: Vincent Trigili
I could see the wisdom in that plan. As small and fast as we were, the larger ships had no hope of catching us. The only ships we needed to be concerned with were their light attack craft. If they were tied up, our chance of escape was much better. “Is this still Plan A?”
“It had better be. I have no Plan B,” he said as he patched the ship’s computers into the hauler’s computer bank. Once that was done we could monitor the fight from our position. The hauler’s computer was doing a good job at holding off the light attack craft, largely because its armor was far too thick for their weapons to penetrate.
It did not take long for the big ships to arrive and turn the tide against the computer. Soon most of the ship’s weapons’ ports were off-line and the enemy was attempting to board, as Narcion had predicted. “Okay, it’s time. Make a run for it,” he said.
As the cruiser was already in launch position, I throttled up the engines, opened the cargo bay doors, and launched at maximum velocity. Immediately upon exiting the cargo bay, our tactical alarms went crazy as the surrounding ships all tried to lock their weapons on us.
“Reduce power to thirty percent, and come about to z plus sixty,” commanded Narcion.
That seemed completely foolish to me, but decades as a slave had taught me to comply first and think never. I made the course corrections as Narcion entered a code into the display in front of him. Then, without warning, we were in jump space.
Once we had emerged Narcion asked, “Status?”
“Checking,” I said as I shook the off the mind-numbing effects of exiting jump space and checked the tactical display. “We are twenty thousand kilometers from our previous location, and it appears that no one has seen us.”
“Excellent. Keep everything on low power for the moment and align to 187 mark 37 degrees for our next jump.”
Once I had aligned the ship I watched the fight on the long-range scanners. The hauler continued to fight back as best it could with most of its weapons destroyed, but other than that there was not much happening. It would not take them long to board the ship, especially if they used the open cargo bay from which we had left.
All the time I’d been watching the fight, Narcion seemed to be waiting for something. We could have jumped much further away and ensured our safety, so he must have had a reason for remaining in this place. His face was blank as he watched the screen. I do not know what he was looking for, but without any warning or change in his expression his hand calmly drifted up and tapped a button on his console.
I glanced at my tactical screen in time to see the hauler explode. The explosion ripped through the surrounding ships and was moving quickly towards us, but Narcion had already triggered the jump drives and we escaped into jump space.
When we came out of post-jump hangover, Narcion activated the communication system. On the screen appeared a man in Resden uniform who snapped, “Well, do you have our stuff or not?”
“Funny you should ask that,” said Narcion. “Your little trap failed.”
“Trap? What are you talking about?” he asked.
“This,” said Narcion as he played back the recording of the ambush we had just escaped. “As you can see, your buddies failed to eliminate me. I am sure the Mercenary Consortium would love to see this.”
“I assure you that Resden had nothing to do with that,” he said. Some of his arrogance and confidence had faded.
“Don’t try to play me for a fool. Those ships have distinct Resden markings and knew the location of our secret rendezvous.”
“What happened to the cargo?” he asked.
“I will show you,” said Narcion. He played back the recording of the trader detonating and destroying all the vessels around it. Silence filled the line as the Resden representative contemplated this turn of events. “Now, I expect full payment, as I kept my part of the deal. I delivered your package to Resden forces at the agreed time and location. If you fail to keep your end of the bargain, I will report this.”
“No need for threats, Narcion,” he said.
“One could say there was no need for backstabbing traps either,” Narcion retorted.
“I will find out what happened and deal with it, and you will receive your payment as agreed,” he said.
“See that I do,” Narcion said as he cut the line.
“Won’t they just put a contract out on your head?” I asked.
“Unlikely, but if they do they will just have to get in line, and it’s a long line,” he said. “Most likely some heads will roll inside their organization, possibly even that of my contact, and we will not hear from them again. At least, not till they want to hire me for another job.”
“What do we do now, then?” I asked.
“The payment for that contract should be enough to cover us for a while. I think that it is time to start your training,” he said.
“Training?” I asked.
“Yes. Come to the cargo area with me,” he said, activating the ship’s autopilot. I wondered at the wisdom of leaving the bridge unattended out here, but he seemed unconcerned.
I followed him through the ship to the rear area, where the cruiser had a small cargo section packed with many containers of various sizes and colors. He headed straight for the most inconspicuous-looking one and opened it. From it he pulled out a flexible suit of battle armor, which he threw to me. “Wear that at all times from now on. You will need it.”
I was surprised to see that the battle suit was designed for a Zalionian, and appeared to be about my size. It was not a cheap model either but of good quality, like everything else of his that I had seen so far. It was a top-of-the-line unit and looked brand new, as if he had bought it knowing in advance for whom and when he would need it.
Narcion dug deeper into the container and pulled out several weapons. He turned and handed me two blasters and a pair of combat knives. “Carry these on you at all times. Your life will depend on that.” He paused a moment and added, “I assume you know how to work a blaster?”
“Yes,” I said, checking them over. They were fully charged and seemed to be weapons of much higher quality than I had seen before. “I’m not familiar with this model, though. Some time on a range might be helpful, but I don’t have much use for the knives.”
“Take them; they are made of much harder material than your claws. I can teach you to use them effectively in support of your natural weapons.” He then did something that struck me to the core. I was holding in my hands a pair of blasters, fully charged and ready to deal deadly force at the speed of light. Not even his reflexes could save him from that. I stood amazed as I watched him turn his back on me and repack the container. In all my life, no one had ever trusted me enough to do that.
I quietly put down my new weapons and donned the armor. I was not sure what to make of Narcion. He had been completely emotionless so far in all his dealings, even the killing of an entire fleet. After serving under a man with the extreme emotions of Donovan, I found myself at a loss to understand or interpret him. When I was dressed in the armor I holstered all the weapons and asked, “You said something about training?”
He turned back to me and replied, “Yes. I need to teach you to fight.”
I was a bit offended by that statement. “I seem to do quite well in that area already.”
“Yes, but not facing the kind of enemies I deal with. I will have to teach you how to fight and kill things of which as yet you know nothing.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“Dead things,” he said.
It had been three long, hard and grueling years of training under Narcion. A dozen times over I thought of walking away from him, but I could not deny the fact that the instruction I was getting was top-notch. He was teaching me everything he could, including very advanced forms of hand-to-hand combat, weapons, stealth, and starship combat. The mental and physical stress of the work far exceeded anything I had previously experienced, but it was yielding results. Narcion was still faster and more nimble than me by far, but I was slowly gaining ground on him. Any thought of leaving when my year was up had vanished long before that time came. I could not explain it, but I instinctively knew that serving with him was where I was meant to be.
Over the years he spoke very little about anything other than study. If I raised a question, he would just say, “Zah’rak, you must focus on your training. There is not much time left,” and leave it unanswered. This was mildly frustrating, but nothing that a lifetime of slavery had not taught me to deal with.
He did occasionally disappear for short periods, leaving me with exercises and other work to do. I could not work out what he did while he was away, or where he went, since our ship was nowhere near any stations. He simply vanished.
One morning, however, Narcion surprised me. “No training today. We have a job to do,” he said.
“A job?” I repeated, surprised.
“Yes; it will be a great opportunity for you,” he said.
“How so?” I asked.
“You will finally get to see the real reason I am out here, and if you do well, you can move on to serious training,” he said, going to the bridge to lay in our course.
I wondered what he meant by “serious training”, because the last few years had surely been no walk in the park. When I reached the bridge he said, “Strap yourself in; we are about to jump.”
Once we had cleared jump space, I saw in front of us a large, obsolete-looking space station. I guessed it to be a remote trading outpost, no doubt with exactly the sort of inhabitants whose company Donovan would have enjoyed.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Petra 37c, an old mining outpost,” he replied.
“But I do not see anything to mine,” I said.
“They mined it all out and moved on. The station has become a storage depot run by the local government,” he said.
“So what’s the job then?” I asked.
“That station has a problem we are being paid to solve,” he said as he punched some codes into the communications array and began to approach the station.
Narcion slowly drew close to the station and connected to one of the docking arms. As we docked I felt a cold chill run down my spine. I involuntarily reacted to it, and Narcion said, “That is a good sign.”
I could not think of any way in which I would interpret that reaction as a ‘good sign’, but decided to wait and see what he was up to.
“Follow me,” he said as he made for the exit hatch. Once there he donned his full battle gear, which told me something major must be going on because he almost never wore armor, even into battle. He complained it would slow him down.
As I got my own gear ready I said, “Before we go out there, I’d like to know a little more about what we are up against.”
“This is one of those cases where the less you know beforehand the better off you are. Let’s just say that on this station there are some creatures we need to remove.”
“Creatures the military could not handle?”
“Yes, but we can. Come,” he said as he swiftly clicked on his helmet and left the ship.
I followed him off once I had my own helmet secured and drew my weapons. I had no idea what I was walking into and needed to be ready to react. He paused at the bottom of the exit ramp and said, “They are close. They know we are here, but they do not yet know who we are. This is good.”
“Where?” I asked.
“In the corridors and heading towards us. This area is too open for a fight. Let’s find a more secure position,” he said and rushed off.
My massive legs and superior gait made it easy for me to match his raw speed, but his agility made it very hard to keep up with him through the twists and turns of the corridors. Soon he found a narrow corridor with a dead end and quickly set up some devices all around the area.
“This spot will work perfectly,” he said. He walked a short distance away from the area and stood there, waiting for our attackers to come.
The location he chose had nowhere to retreat to. That meant either that he was confident of being able to take this enemy, or that he felt retreat was not an option in this case. I really hoped it was the former, but feared it was the latter.
Soon some strange, lumbering, humanoid beasts came into sight and slowly made their way towards us. Narcion did not move at all for a long time, until all of them seemed to have come into view; then he pulled out his weapons and began to fire rapidly into the mass of advancing creatures. I joined him and slowly we mowed them down. The devices he had planted along the corridor sent waves of fire into the crowd of beasts, helping to reduce their numbers and filling the corridor with thick black smoke. The station’s environmental controls struggled to clear the air, but thankfully succeeded well enough for the filters in my armor to handle it. If they had failed I would have had to fall back on the oxygen tanks on the suit, but they were limited in size and I did not want to think about the difficulty of fighting in this smoke if they ran out.
When the beasts were all dealt with, I said, “It seems to me that the military could have handled that easily enough.”
“Possibly, but that's not our target,” he said. He kept looking down the corridor as if he were waiting for something. I tried to guess what it was he was looking for, but all I could see was rapidly clearing smoke and piles of bodies.
“Then what is?” I asked.
In answer, a being of some kind came into view wearing a long, dark, ragged robe, its face hidden by a deep cowl. The robe did not quite reach the ground, and neither did its feet; in fact, I was not at all sure if it actually had feet. It just hovered there a few inches off the floor and seemed to lock its gaze on Narcion. I could not make out any eyes, but still somehow I had the impression that it was looking hard into Narcion’s eyes as if trying to win a staring contest. As they had their standoff, two more of the creatures appeared and one of them locked its gaze on me.
Fear rocked my body and I turned my eyes away. I could not hold its gaze without my body shaking in fear. Narcion seemed unaffected and stared on. Soon all three of them were focused on him. I raised my weapon, ready to shoot, but Narcion said, “Don’t waste your time. That gun can’t hurt them.”