Gray Panthers Captain Short Blade (19 page)

“General, if that’s possible, we will.” Short Blade opened the car’s passenger door and slid out of the seat. “Thank you again, General.”

Slamming the door, he walked toward the stretch limo. Three men in suits, each wearing sunglasses and ear pieces, stood at parade rest next to the vehicle.

“Let’s get going, gentlemen,” Short Blade said in a conversational tone that carried the distance to the men. None of them registered any surprise as they took their positions around him until he was in the limousine.

“You should already have the destination, gentlemen. I hope to be picking up a friend, or at least have a short visit.”

The limo turned north from the base and drove for only a few minutes before turning off the main highway into an older residential area. Rows of small houses had chain-link fences encasing the front yards, which were mostly a mix of sand and dead grass. Cars and trucks in various states of disrepair were parked along both sides of the narrow street. Some were even missing wheels or body parts. Short Blade was surprised when the limo stopped in the middle of the block. They were sitting in front of a small house that looked no different from the others except an American flag hung limply from a front-entry flagpole near the front door. People watched wearily from their houses or from groups standing in the street. A band of kids headed for the limo, some on bikes and others running. As Short Blade got out with his detail of guards, many of them turned and fled, but others stopped to stare.

“Hey, mistah, what is you?” a boy shouted from a safe distance. His companions stood next to him, all of them waiting for an answer. More kids and adults approached but kept their distance as well.

“He’s a Jacka! Mr. Poland told me about them, from when he fought the invaders,” a boy shouted as he rode up to the limo on his bike. As he stopped, he put his hand on the limo to steady himself. “He’s so small, though, he must be the one who was on his spaceship with him. Small Sword is his name!”

“You are mainly right, my son. I am Short Blade, of the Claw Clan. I’m here to visit my friend, Commander Poland. Is he here?”

The boy chose that moment to get shy and just pointed to the house with the flag. Short Blade followed the first bodyguard, who held open the front gate. The lawn was dried up and in need of care, he noticed. One guard stayed close behind him and the third guard stayed just inside the yard, remaining vigilant to any possible danger.

The first guard knocked at the door and waited for an answer. A few moments later, a thin Hispanic woman appeared at the door. She was wearing only a short robe that was hanging open in the front.

“What’s choo want? I was sleeping, dammit.”

Short Blade looked at the woman, who seemed unfocused until she saw him.

“Was da fuck is yoo?” she shouted, stumbling on something as she backed away from the door. She landed on her butt, with her legs splayed wide open. Short Blade interpreted that as his invitation to enter through the open doorway.

“I’m Captain Short Blade, of the shuttle Phoenix. I’m here to see Commander Poland. Is he in?”

The woman looked at him in fear and started to cry, snot running from her nose to her chin. She finally pulled herself together enough to point to a closed door.

“Commander Poland, can I come in, please?” Short Blade asked, softly tapping on the door.

When there was no answer, he opened the door slightly and almost wretched from the stink of body odor combined with stale urine and feces. Poland was sitting in an easy chair facing a TV that was playing static. The small table next to him held a half empty bottle of tequila, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, an antique wheel gun, and a box of pistol cartridges. Short Blade thought he was dead until he saw his chest rise and fall slowly. A small blanket covered him from the waist down. His hair was greasy and matted, his beard long and tangled. Short Blade tried unsuccessfully to shake him awake. Looking back at his bodyguard, he made a decision.

“Pick him and bring him with us. We’ll be going to the Orient from here. Let them know a doctor will be needed.” The guard cringed slightly when he got his arms around him and discovered there was no other clothing under the blanket, and there had been an accident. As he lifted the man, waste fell from him, soiling the guard’s clothes.

“I’ll buy you a new set of clothes when we’re done,” Short Blade told him. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but Commander Poland is a good man, and a hero.”

The guard just nodded. Poland’s skin was either wet or greasy everywhere the guard tried to grab it to steady his grip.

“Whas yo doin’ to my man? Put him back in hese chair. I takin’ good care of him,” the woman said as she started to rise from the floor.

Short Blade hissed at her with undisguised fury, fighting the urge to attack her. He followed the guards to the limo and was relieved when they pulled away from the house. He had the driver roll down every window and open the sunroof, but he still found it hard not to puke from the stench.

“Don’t worry, old comrade. I’ll take care of you,” he said, reaching down and adjusting the blanket that one of the guards had covered him with.

The guard who was covered in excrement pulled back the blanket and began to check Poland, looking carefully at each arm and leg and his veins all over. Satisfied, he covered him back up again.

“He’s not doing intravenous drugs, so that’s a good sign. His breath smells like a refinery, so maybe he’s just an alcoholic. The hotel doctor can take a blood sample and determine what, if any, drugs he’s taking.”

Short Blade nodded in appreciation, hoping the commander could be helped quickly.

The limo drove past the Orient and Short Blade grew suspicious until it pulled into a service parking area underneath the hotel. Two men wearing white lab coats were waiting with a wheelchair. As soon as the limo stopped, the men transferred Poland to the wheelchair and began to take his vitals. Short Blade walked over to the bodyguard with the filthy suit and handed him a gold coin.

“Thank you for your services. You went above what was expected of you,” he told the guard. He then turned to follow the wheelchair, leaving the man staring at his unexpected reward.

The penthouse suite was as luxurious as Short Blade had come to expect from the Orient, but he was truly impressed by what he saw when he followed the doctors into the bedroom. A hospital bed had been set up and medical equipment of all sorts was positioned around it. One of the doctors asked Short Blade to wait outside the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Short Blade didn’t argue. He just walked over to the bar near the hot tub and pulled out a carton of milk. He sat down in a chair and absently sipped from the carton as he watched an assortment of people entering and leaving through the bedroom door.

“Mr. Short Blade, I’m Dr. Romano. From what we can see so far, your friend is suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition. We’ve cleaned him up and have started parenteral nutrition—feeding him through an IV. I also administered a mild sedative to help him rest. We’ve taken blood samples and will have the results by morning. In the meantime, a nurse will stay here overnight, and I’ll be back in the morning to check on him.”

Short Blade nodded, noticing for the first time that the sun had set and the view from the window was a spectacular display of lights. He gave the doctor a tired but grateful smile, and as he walked over to the window for a better look, he heard the door close behind him.

Central space dock, planet Glory

28 April 2129

Harve was happy to finally return to duty. Superior Captain Thrust had kept him restricted to his cabin until he was fully recovered. In the meantime, Harve had used every device at hand to coordinate with Chief Edge, instructing him on how to connect the AI in the communications section of the ship. Once the power had been connected to the unit, it was only a matter of connecting the communication nodes to the different areas of the ship. Sensors were also applied liberally throughout the ship so the AI could monitor areas that didn’t have nodes or faeries.

“Good morning, MO Harve,” Chief Edge said. “I hope you’re well rested. We still have a lot of work ahead of us to get that AI of yours fully online.”  Seeing the MO back on duty put Edge in good spirits.

“I helped you with all the hard parts, and the AI from the ship next door monitored your work as well, so what did you screw up, Chief?” Harve asked, his one eyebrow raised and a slight smile on his lips.

The chief looked annoyed, until he realized that he was being played with. “Sir, although our ship is very similar to the ship next to us, many of the internal controls are dissimilar. We need to figure out an approach to modify the new interfaces in the different systems with the AI.

“Vengeance, can you hear me?” Harve asked, feeling foolish.

“Yes, Maintenance Officer Harve, I hear you. I’m also aware of the problem ahead of us. The human approach was to rebuild each ship so they were identical. There are twelve main stations that need to be rebuilt from the bottom up. The designs are available for all, and they can be made easily with the fabrication unit on board. I recommend having a dedicated team to start building the transfer gel conduits from me to the different parts of the ship. It would be best if I was connected to the fabrication unit first, so I can start building the parts we’ll need.”

“So, Chief, what was the problem? We have a plan of action right there, so let’s light a fire under our people and get it done. Don’t hesitate to ask Vengeance if you’re having any trouble.”

Edge knew his officer was making fun of him. He gave him his most ferocious look to get the message across. “Yes, sir. If I have any questions or need directions, I’ll consult with Vengeance,” he replied icily.

Harve proceed on to engineering to see what else had managed to go wrong while he was recuperating. His entire body still felt tender. It was a good reminder of the instructions his “visitors” had given him to obey. Engineering was full of crates of every size, creating a maze to navigate through. Looking over the documentation, he saw that almost everything in the crates could have been built by the fabrication unit instead, which would have saved time, effort, and money. Rather than having the technicians start building the conduits for the transfer gel, he sent a message to Chief Edge telling him to use the available assets instead of waiting to make them with the fabricator.

Entering his office in engineering, Harve saw an alert on the monitor notifying him that more than six hundred messages awaited him.
Perhaps if I tried hard, I could get recaptured by the pirates!
he thought.
Crap. Just get to work.

Fifty of the messages were from Fire fleet headquarters requesting status on the ship’s AI update. He selected them all and sent a quick but cryptic response that stated:

Project initiated, five percent completed. Additional details to follow in
                            future update.

Roughly four hundred of the messages were solicitations to provide material to the engineering section. Harve was aware of a scam in which parts were being stripped from derelict ships and resold to the navy for the price of new parts. More than a hundred of the messages were about parts that had been delivered to the ship but not acknowledged as received. He forwarded those messages to his junior maintenance officer for action, since the materials had arrived when he was responsible for engineering. The remaining emails were personal, most of them wishing him to get well soon.

As he began to stand up, he noticed that a new message had appeared at the top of the queue. The sender was not identified. The message simply read:

Report to room eight hundred now.

He knew it had to be League of Planets secret police. Initially, fear made him cold, but then he began to feel hot with anger and he decided to give some payback for the beating he’d taken. Seething, he didn’t notice much of anything on the way to his “appointment.” As he neared the door, though, uncertainty took over. When he opened the door, standing just inside were the two biggest Jacka he’d ever seen, wearing the Fire fleet uniforms of infantry sergeants.

“Come inside, MO Harve. I’ve been waiting for you to recover so we could have a chat.”

Harve’s eyes followed the voice to a third Jacka, who was so small he was almost a runt. He was an infantry major in a field uniform.

“I’m Major Machete, of Fire Fleet Intelligence. First, I want to commend you for your honesty as a maintenance officer. You would be surprised how many have gotten rich from the position. I am also impressed with your current project, upgrading your ship to incorporate an AI. That aside, I have to ask you about your capture and the pirates who held you. Are you willing to answer a few questions?”

“Yes, Major. I have nothing to hide.”

“Good. We’ve reviewed reports stating that when you were captured on the Vengeance, you were the only slave without a pain collar. You’ve been of great service to the Fire fleet, and we won’t hold it against you if you admit that you were, in fact, a pirate. Were you?”

“No, sir. I was a slave, but because of my knowledge and superior abilities, instead of a pain collar they threatened me by holding my wife and daughter hostage. They’re most likely being forced to serve in a pleasure house now because of my decision to revolt when the Fire fleet arrived.”

“The circumstances still seem suspicious to us. However, your fellow slaves and members of the crew did testify that you made it possible to keep the Vengeance out of the pirates’ hands by safely disabling the FTL. Do you have any idea where the pirates’ base is?”

“It’s three hours’ distance by FTL from where I was rescued—it’s an assortment of cargo ships and wrecks that have been cobbled together to create a space station. We didn’t have port windows to see the stars, so I can’t even guess what system it was in. I did some work on the insides of it, though. I would estimate it consisted of at least a dozen ships, many scrapped of their engines, with life support provided by one central location. Some of the ships were old pre-FTL. They were huge. The entire facility could probably hold about ten thousand residents. I heard talk that they had a mix of a dozen destroyers and cruisers from the Libra navy. Half of them were always there to protect the station while the others were out raiding.”

“That’s good information, MO Harve. Did you ever notice what they did to the cargos or crews and ships they didn’t retain?”

Noticing that he was being addressed by his rank, Harve felt confident that at least he’d cleared himself of being a pirate.

“The pirates were always angry when they sold warships. They wanted them to grow stronger but their leader refused. The same buyer bought every FTL-equipped ship the pirates captured, and quickly. Whoever it was didn’t haggle about the price or worry about being caught with the ships. It could take three hundred years or more to search the area where they might be based.”

The major just nodded as he listened. It seemed to Harve as if the entire interview was a square to be filled as part of an investigation, just so they could say that steps had been taken.

“That’s all we have for you, MO Harve. Please consider this interview confidential. You are not to speak about it to your captain or other shipmates. You’re dismissed,” the major said, surprising Harve by reaching forward to shake his hand.

Harve replayed parts of the interview in his head on the way back to the ship and soon became lost in thought.
It’d take three hundred years of searching to find the pirate base. You’re a Libra. Use your superior abilities to narrow it down. It must be in the area that was controlled by the Libra Alliance. There, now you cut your search down to a hundred and eighty years!
Harve smiled to himself as he mentally figured the general area of space.
The base has to be away from shipping lanes, yet close enough to have brought the derelict ships and those without FTL drives they used to build the base
.

Before he realized it, he was back in the hallway that led to his office. Going inside, he sat down at his monitor and brought up a map of the general area where the pirate base might be. Then he pulled up another map showing the last reported locations of all ships that had disappeared in the last six months. He was surprised to see that more than a hundred were missing. At first there didn’t seem to be any pattern, but then he took a closer look.
The area on our side of the border with the Republic space has no missing ships,
he thought
. That area has no real shipping except for navy ships that monitor the border on both sides. Since the war ended, no one has been monitoring the border with the Republic in the area that had been claimed by the Libra Alliance. The base must be somewhere in that area!

Harve was stunned at how easily he’d figured out where the pirates could be. By superimposing another map of the areas that were three hours by FTL from where he’d been captured, he identified an area of space that a single ship could investigate in a month.
If I report this information, will I just vanish … or will I have a much-publicized death as a warning to others? Can I still rescue my wife and child?

He sat in silence, not even noticing that the duty day had ended and engineering was completely quiet. He decided he couldn’t trust any Jacka.