Project Starfighter (32 page)

“Hold up,” Eve said, preventing
Chris from proceeding any further. “What kind of skills? Don’t be
cryptic with me, boy.”

Chris glared at Eve’s smirk as she
used Tyler’s preferred name for him. “Phoebe has certain psionic
abilities.”

Eve looked at both Phoebe and Chris
in disdain, before shaking her head in disbelief. “Oh my God,
whatever. Well, at least she can amuse Clayton and Dar by reading
their fortunes while you talk to the boss man, and reveal which of
them is going to get lucky tonight. Here’s a hint: neither.

“Right, this way,” Eve said,
beckoning the three to the dance floor. She pushed the dancers aside
as she walked across it, giving those who contested an effective,
threatening stare that caused most to back down immediately. Those
that didn’t were treated to a wave of Eve’s gun.

A flight of carpeted steps at the
far end of the dance floor led up to a private area, where two men
stood, keeping uninvited guests away. Tattoos covered their faces,
though they were of a different style and colour to Eve’s. They
were clearly part of a different mercenary group, and it seemed that
the mercenaries were all still working together, despite WEAPCO’s
partly successful Mission 3412.

“They’re with me,” Eve told
the men. “They’re here to see Tyler.”

The men stepped aside, allowing
Chris, Sid, and Phoebe to move past them, unopposed, and the three
entered the private room, where a number of people were seated around
a low table, enjoying luminous drinks.

Chris caught the stink of Tyler’s
cigar before he sighted the man himself, though there wasn’t much
in it. Tyler appeared the same as he had been the last time Chris had
seen him – same size, same beard, same bionic eye, though the
anti-gravity suspension ring had been set aside for the time being.
The man was reclining on a sofa all by himself, little room left for
anyone else. Chris pondered briefly how exactly a man of Tyler’s
substantial girth was able to wedge himself into the cockpit of a
starfighter. They weren’t exactly roomy at the best of times.

“Ah! You’re here, boy,” the
obese man said as the three approached. He began to wriggle in his
seat, pulling himself into a more upright position, taking another
drag on his cigar.

“Have a seat.” Tyler indicated a
sofa that was already occupied by two men, whom Chris recognised as
Darcy Rodriguz and Clayton Vita. Chris wondered how many of Tyler’s
core group had survived the attack on their base by the
Grand
Vizier
.

“Shift your arse, Dar,” Tyler
said, when the men didn’t move. “You too, Clayton. You might be a
mute, but you’re not deaf. Get up. I have business to discuss. Go
play with some of the dancing tarts downstairs.”

Dar and Clayton moved off, Dar
glaring down at Sid and Chris. As the man passed, Sid took a small
step back, but Chris held his ground, unperturbed. When Dar came to
Phoebe, he stopped and gave her a once-over with his eyes. He turned
a grin to Clayton.

“Nice find, Mr Bainfield,”
Clayton said in his synthetic voice.

“Hey boss, can we play with this
one?” Dar asked, looking back at Tyler.

“No,” Phoebe said.

“Oh, playing hard to get. I like
that.” Dar moved a little closer to Phoebe, but Sid pushed himself
between the two.

“Hey, back off,” Sid said,
giving Dar a push. The skinny mercenary barely moved an inch.

“Seriously?” Dar looked at
Phoebe. “The geek? Well, hey, I suppose it’s better than mister
have-a-go hero here.” He motioned to Chris.

“Dar!” Tyler snapped. “I won’t
tell you again. Go!”

“Creep,” Phoebe muttered, as the
men left the private area.

“The other one’s worse,” Sid
muttered, watching Clayton descend the stairs. “I thought he was
some sort of robot when I first met him. He hardly ever speaks a
word, and always sounds just like that whenever he does.”

“So, what’s this all about,
Tyler?” Chris asked after the three had sat down. He noted that
Tyler hadn’t evicted Eve from the private area, the woman settling
onto one of the armrests of the Wolf Pack leader’s couch.

Tyler did not answer him
immediately, and instead pointed to a set of glasses and a jug
containing a multicoloured substance that was glittering like stars.
It was swirling steadily. “Galaxy Smash,” the leader of the Wolf
Pack said.

“I know it,” Chris said. It was
expensive stuff, usually only ever afforded by the very rich. And
there were few of them.

“Try some,” Tyler said. “It
tastes of fruit juice and ginger.”

The rotund man continued to gesture
and insist until Chris did so. It was nice enough. Sid and Phoebe
joined him for some.

“So,” Tyler said, taking a drag
on his cigar, “how have you been?”

“Can we skip the pleasantries and
get to the point?” Chris asked. “I’m not here to exchange
gossip and share holiday snaps.”

Tyler fell silent and looked at the
others in the room, who had also stopped talking. He then burst out
laughing, a loud roar, as he slapped one of his enormous thighs.
“Well, you’re developing quite an attitude, boy.”

“My name’s Chris,” Chris
reminded him. “How did you know how to get in touch with me? Have
you been following us? Or have you infiltrated the
Dodger
with
some sort of spy drone?”

Tyler said nothing, and merely
tapped his nose.

Chris glowered. “I need to know,
Tyler. WEAPCO could—”

“Don’t panic, Mr Bainfield,
WEAPCO won’t find you as easily as I did. They might have access to
AIs and all sorts of advanced technology, but there are a few tricks
they have yet to learn. And no, I won’t share the secret.”

Done with his cigar, Tyler screwed
the remains into the ashtray on the table in front of him. “Who is
your new friend?” he asked.

“This is Phoebe Lexx,” Chris
said.

“She is said to have ‘special
powers’,” Eve said, waggling her fingers in the air, bringing
chuckles from the others gathered in the room.

Tyler’s expression remained
deadpan. “And what powers would those be?” he asked.

“I can talk to machines,” Phoebe
said, after a pause.

“Big deal, so can I,” Eve said,
helping herself to some Galaxy Smash. “Mostly to tell WEAPCO drones
to fu—”

“Eve, button it!” Tyler shot at
the woman. The man seemed to have little patience for his
subordinates tonight. Either that, or Phoebe’s revelation had
piqued his interest. He returned his attention to Phoebe. “What do
you mean when you say you can ‘talk to them’?”

“I can control them with my mind;
communicate with them, and tell them what to do,” Phoebe said. “I
can bend almost any AI system to my will. It’s basic at the moment,
and I peak at around a dozen drones and fighters, but it is
improving.”

“Interesting,” Tyler said. He
was silent for a time. “Do you have an identical twin sister?”

“How did you know that?” Phoebe
asked.

“William Benedict, the only person
said to have ever stood against WEAPCO, was a twin. He turned almost
their entire fleet against them. Stands to reason that if you’re
capable of the same thing you might have a twin sister. It would
explain why WEAPCO wants to kill you.”

Chris glanced at Sid. Tyler might be
a mercenary, considered a low life by some, but the man was clearly
no fool. He was clued up, knew quite a lot, and thought quickly. He
could prove an even greater ally than Chris had first believed. Most
of the other mercenaries in the room were looking between their boss
and Phoebe, perhaps now a little more willing to believe the tale of
William Benedict after having dismissed it in the past. Some of the
scepticism had also left Eve’s face, though not entirely.

“So, what is it that you want?”
Chris repeated. “You said you could use our skills? What did you
have in mind?”

“I’ve heard reports that you
have been crashing WEAPCO’s party recently,” Tyler said. “You
took down a corvette called the
Duke of Wellington
, and I
remember you proving to be quite talented back in Spirit, while we
were battling against the
Grand Vizier
.”

“I still think it was his fault
that New Chile was destroyed,” a man standing close to Tyler said.
He fixed Chris with cold eyes. “We can’t let something like that
go unpunished.”

“Was everyone killed?” Chris
asked Tyler.

“Everyone who was there at the
time, including six out of the eight original Heads of Family,”
Tyler said.

Chris almost apologised. He caught
himself before he did so, and simply nodded. Apologising would be an
admission of guilt, of involvement. It
wasn’t
his fault.
Whether he had acted or not, the outcome would likely have been the
same. Six of eight Heads of Family. Tyler was one, who was the other?

“This job you want us for,”
Chris said. “Something to do with that?”

“We’re upping the fight against
the Corporation,” Tyler said. “We’re going to start hitting
their shipyards first, beginning with the one at Elamale. After that,
there is a mining and fuel scooping vessel that drives a major part
of WEAPCO’s supply line in this system. By targeting both of them,
we’ll be able to lure WEAPCO out and push them into dispatching
their best units against us. Once they’re here, we’ll down them,
and move forward.”

Chris remained silent as he waited
for Tyler to finish detailing his plan. Tyler said no more.“That’s
it?” Chris asked. “That’s your plan?”

“The start of it.”

Chris looked from Tyler, to Eve, to
Sid and Phoebe, and the others in the private room of the DNA Lounge.
“Um ... that’s not exactly a plan. WEAPCO’s navy is huge. When
the Resistance met them in Spirit, they brought a force more than ten
times that of our own.”

“The Wolf Pack is significantly
larger and more powerful than you remember,” Tyler said. “What
with so many lost cubs floating around,” he turned to look at some
of those who wore different tattoos to those of Eve, “someone had
to give them a new home.”

“It’s still not enough,” Chris
said.

“And your own plan was better?
How?” Eve asked. “You were prepared to jump into a fighter all by
yourself and speed straight into the middle of them. You’re no
William Benedict. You wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of
minutes, at most.”

“Yes, yes, okay,” Chris
admitted, retreating behind his glass. “I saw the flaw in that plan
sometime ago, if I’m being honest. We’re now focusing on trying
to rescue Phoebe’s sister, who is being held prisoner in Murdar.
Unfortunately, I know that rushing directly into that system would be
utter suicide, and so we’re looking for another way.”

“They have your sister?” Tyler
asked Phoebe. “How do you know she’s still alive?”

“I ...” Phoebe started. “She
sent me a message; a thought, an indication that she was alive. She
was in pain.”

Eve rolled her eyes, and sat back
with her drink, a smirk on her face.

“Interesting,” Tyler said,
indicating for one of the men nearby to refill his glass. He would
never be able to reach the jug himself, not without knocking over the
entire table. “They’re obviously using her to get to you. They
will probably have her hooked up to some neural contraption or other,
using your shared thoughts to pinpoint your location. If it were me,
I’d be keeping your sister alive until they found you, and then
bump you off together.”

“Thanks for letting me know,”
Phoebe said in anguish.

“Just telling you the truth,
sweetheart.”

Tyler took the glass he was handed,
downed some of the swirling contents, then returned his attention to
Chris. “But back to the contract. Taking down WEAPCO will be more
complicated than it appears on the surface. This is bound to become a
war of attrition. I want to lure their forces out and strike them
down little by little. I want you to help us there, boy. That
starfighter of yours, with its time space dilation whatsit, will give
us an advantage.”

“And what do we get in exchange?”
Chris asked.

“We’ll be helping you with your
crusade,” Tyler said. “To see the defeat of WEAPCO was your
overall goal, wasn’t it? Freedom in the galaxy, and the ability to
do as you please, without having to answer to anyone. You get what
you want; we get what we want.”

“I think I know what’s actually
going on here,” Sid broke in. He had remained silent since the
three had sat down, and had also been downing the Galaxy Smash at
quite a rapid pace. Chris got the impression that he was now full of
Dutch Courage and believed himself about to say something quite
profound or rather elegant. Chris just hoped it wouldn’t be
something really stupid.

“This isn’t just about WEAPCO,”
Sid went on. “This is about the power vacuum that’s been created
within the ranks of the mercenary groups, isn’t it? I’ve seen the
Wolf Pack and the Jousters working for you here, as well as a few
Galaxy Jumpers, and Unseen Shadows. They were standing at the bottom
of the stairs when we came up here, and there’s one over there in
the corner. I think I might have spotted some of the Blue Moons and
Hydras, too. I don’t see any of the Death Angels, Blackwater
Riders, or Omega Crusaders, though.”

Chris saw a scowl began to form on
Tyler’s face. Chris knew he should be warning Sid to stop speaking,
but he was too interested in hearing what Sid had to say.

“You’re trying to establish
yourself as the single Head of the Family,” Sid said. “You said
that there are only two heads of the family left. You’ve got
perhaps five or six groups here, but that still leaves several
hundred highly-trained guns for hire without a leader. The
seconds-in-command will likely have been killed in the battle in
Spirit, too, since many of them would have been entrusted with
commanding the
Centurion
. The ones left out in the cold won’t
all go freelance, either, because the work is harder to come by and
there would be too much competition. Better to pool their resources
wherever possible.