Project Starfighter (33 page)

“But if the opportunity allows,
why have two separate groups, when you can be in control of one huge
one and effectively affirm yourself as the largest military power
second only to WEAPCO? And if you were to blow WEAPCO aside, who
would there be to answer to? The winner would effectively end up
ruling the known galaxy, as there would be no one to stop them.

“Which makes me wonder, how do we
know we’re not better off supporting the other guy?”

Chris gave a start as he heard the
whine of plasma pistols powering up, the click of shotgun and other
weapons being cocked and trained on them. He felt Phoebe and Sid
press against him, the two squashing into him. As it turned out, Sid
had
said something quite stupid.

“Sorry,” Sid said. “Think I
took it a little too far.”

“You think?” Chris said.

“I still have dibs, right, boss?”
Eve asked, looking at Tyler, gun trained on Chris.

“Okay, okay, easy, easy, easy,”
Chris said, looking around at the men and women aiming guns at him,
showing them his open palms, and trying to gesture for them to lower
the weapons. “We’re still neutral here. We’re not picking sides
just yet.”

Tyler remained where he was,
casually rocking his glass, listening to the ice cubes clinking
within. He fixed Chris with one small, beady eye, the iris of his
bionic one contracting and flexing.

“Besides,” Chris said, looking
at the leader of the Wolf Pack. “You also gave me your word that no
harm would come to us.”

“Lower your guns,” Tyler
instructed. “That’s another reason that we want you – Mr Wilson
here is a little sharper than most others. If you can think that
quickly on a battlefield, your skills will be very welcome.”

“Listen,” Chris said to Tyler,
“we’re not looking to get involved in a power struggle.”

“You might not have much of a
choice,” Tyler said. “The
other guy
in this case is Mal,
and he has a habit of simply
taking
.”

“Mal?”

“Mal the Magnificent, Mal the
Immortal.”

“Yes, I’m very familiar with who
he is. I never knew that you lot once worked together. No one
bothered to tell me during my stay.”

“‘Working together’ is a
rather lofty way of putting it,” a woman with white tattoo markings
said.

“Mal was basically a control
freak,” Eve said. “Despite being a part of the Family, Mal and
his followers always believed that they were better than everyone
else, and that he alone should be in control of everything. It was
obvious to many that he was secretly plotting to take down the other
Heads from the inside, and take over command of their groups.”

“Hard to believe that none of the
rest of you were thinking the same thing,” Sid muttered, from
behind his glass. Tyler fixed the hacker with a cold stare, and Sid
said no more.

Eve continued, “Then one day he
disappeared off somewhere, taking a handful of his closest with him.
No one saw hide nor hair of him for two whole years. He wasn’t
replaced as Head of Family during that time, but none of us thought
we’d ever see him again. We figured after so long without any
contact that he was dead and gone. Then he came back. Turns out he’d
headed off on some quest or other and found the Ten Commandments, or
some nonsense like that. He and his newly formed Immortal League then
became the most bloodthirsty group there ever was. As far as I’m
concerned, they’ve long since ceased being a mercenary group, and
are now a cult. Some others don’t look at it that way, though, and
still consider him to be one of the Heads of the Family.”

“Who?” Chris asked.

“Anyone who doesn’t like the
boss man,” Eve said, tilting her head towards Tyler. “The enemy
of the enemy and all that. They’d rather join that cult than work
for us.”

Chris puffed out his cheeks. “Sounds
like this League could turn out to be just as bad as WEAPCO.”

“No, boy,” Tyler said in a low
voice. “They’ll be much, much worse. You couldn’t have failed
to notice the lot outside, recruiting. We’ve recently discovered
that their numbers are well into the hundreds of thousands now, many
of whom are proficient in combat skills, as well as starfighter
piloting. If this keeps up ...”

“We’ve got to stop him,”
Phoebe said.

“Ha!” Tyler said. “We’ve
tried to kill Mal more times than I’ve had hot meals.”

And that’s quite a lot, judging
by the size of you
, Chris thought to himself.

“But after each and every time we
think we’ve finally gotten rid of him, the bastard somehow pops
back up again.”

“Nothing we do makes a
difference,” Eve growled. “It’s like ...”

“He’s immortal?” Sid said.

“Yes,” Tyler said. “Like he’s
immortal. Like his damn League promises to make its followers.”

“No one can ever get near him,
either,” Eve said. “We’ve tried infiltrators, assassins, and
all sorts, but they all just come back in boxes. Several boxes.
Each.”

“Understand this, boy,” Tyler
said, looking at Chris, “we
need
to kill him. We
have
to kill him. He
must
be stopped. Permanently. They might seem
harmless on the surface, and a bit of a nuisance, but believe me when
their Pilgrimage begins they’ll make WEAPCO look like a dream by
comparison.”

“And what makes you think that
killing him will end the cult?” Chris asked. “What makes you so
sure that they won’t just carry on without him?”

“He’s their leader, the only one
who can lead them to Heaven. The League began to haemorrhage members
over the period that they thought he was dead. The others ran off and
hid, to patiently await his return. Shame he didn’t stay away for
long.”

Chris looked at Sid and Phoebe, who
nodded their agreement to his unspoken question. “Fine, we’ll
help you to find a way to dispose of Mal,” Chris said. “But I’m
curious,” he added swiftly, as Tyler grinned, “what would you do
if you won? As Sid said, with WEAPCO and Mal defeated you would
control the biggest army in the galaxy, standing completely
unopposed. You never actually answered Sid’s question, either. So
tell me straight, Tyler – can we trust you? Are you a man of your
word or not?”

Tyler laughed. “I do like it when
you try to act all aggressive, boy.”

“Chris! Tyler, can I trust you?”

“You’ll just have to,” Tyler
said.

“That’s not exactly a compelling
reason,” Chris said.

“That’s the only one you’re
getting. And what about you? Let us say that your little crusade
against WEAPCO is successful and you overthrow them. What would your
first act be? Would you have a crown made and a throne built for you
to sit upon, to oversee your subjects from Earth?”

“My job would be done,” Chris
said. “I would go back home and return to my normal life.”

“As a pizza delivery boy?” Eve
asked. The room fell about laughing.

Chris didn’t react to the mocking.
“I will have done what I set out to do, and the people of the
galaxy would be free to create their own futures. Their elected
governments would care for them, and their voices would be heard.”

“How very noble of you,” Tyler
said. He downed what remained of his drink and set it down on the
couch next to him. “So, do we have a deal?”

Chris mulled it over. Tyler had kept
his word each time in the past – training him, offering him and Sid
his protection, acquiring the Firefly. There was always the
possibility that this time the man was lying, but at this point Chris
could see few other options open to him. Besides, better to keep
Tyler close by, where he could keep an eye on him.

“Okay,” Chris said.

Tyler beckoned Chris forward to
shake on it.

“When is our first strike going to
take place?” Chris asked.

“I will contact you in the next
twenty-four hours. We will hit the shipyards first. It’s now time
for you to go. This place is reserved for invited guests only.”

Eve grabbed hold of Chris and began
to frogmarch him out of the VIP area, a couple of Tyler’s heavies
pulling Sid and Phoebe up from the sofa and doing likewise.

“Tyler, one thing,” Chris said,
pausing just before he was evicted from the private area. “If you
double cross me, I
will
kill you. I’ll do it personally; I
won’t hire someone else to do it for me.” He expected anger from
the mercenary, but Tyler merely reached casually for another cigar
and lit it.

“Said the man who never took a
life the whole time he was at New Chile,” Tyler said. “But
there’s always a first time, and you’d be right to try. It’s in
the contract, after all; the contract, I’ll remind you, that we
both
shook on.” Tyler waved a hand, and Eve bundled Chris
out.

~

“Nice
way to treat a business partner,” Chris said, as they came to
bottom of the steps.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Eve said.
“Would you have preferred this?”

Before Chris could react, Eve
grabbed him and kissed him firmly on the lips, forcing her tongue
into his mouth. Chris did not respond, but neither did he pull away,
letting her finish.

“We’ll say that was from the
boss man,” Eve said, once she was done. “Not that he’s as good
a kisser as me, you understand. Beards, you see. Far too hairy.”
She looked at Sid and Phoebe next. “Nah, not my type,” she said,
before turning on her heel and starting back up the stairs, wiggling
her hips as she went. “See you later, Chris,” she called over her
shoulder.

“Does she always treat him like
that?” Phoebe asked Sid, once they had pushed their way back across
the dance floor, and were heading towards the docking port, to return
to the Manx.

Sid grinned. “No. Usually she
kicks him in the nuts.”

“
D
o
you think we can trust Tyler?” Phoebe asked.

“The way I look at it, we’ve now
got three major problems,” Chris said, as he piloted the Manx back
to the
Dodger
. “WEAPCO, who we’ve always known about; Mal
and his group, the Immortal League; and Tyler himself.”

“So, you
don’t
trust
him?” Sid said.

“It’s pretty hard to,
completely. He’s a mercenary; he works for the highest bidder. He
and his group could be with us one day, and against us the next. This
whole Mal business has me more troubled, though. He sounds like a
psychopath, worse than WEAPCO. What we don’t want to end up doing
is dethroning one tyrant to put in place another.”

“We need to ensure that Tyler wins
this little war, then,” Phoebe said. “But in such a way that he
can’t take all the power for himself.”

“In that case, maybe the best
thing for us to do would be to get rid of all three of them,” Sid
said. “But we should deal with WEAPCO first.”

Chris sighed. This was getting more
complicated than he could ever have expected. “Yes, that would be
the best move. I wouldn’t put it past Tyler to have already
considered that, though. And knowing that we have Phoebe on our side,
with her ability to control machines, will have made us just as
dangerous as WEAPCO and Mal in his eyes.”

The
Dodger
’s AI lowered the
shields as the Manx approached, and allowed it to enter the cargo
hold, Chris setting the craft down next to the Firefly.

“I think we should lie low until
Tyler wants us,” Chris said, as the three exited the ship. “In
the meanwhile, let’s continue to find out everything we can about
the Zetaman Facility. It might also be worth our while digging up
what other information we can about Mal and his followers, just in
case there’s something we can use that Tyler missed. I have a
feeling that Mal’s League will be loyal to the death.”

Sid and Phoebe agreed, the two
heading off to the bridge together, leaving Chris on his own in the
hold. The feelings of uncertainty came creeping back to him at that
moment, and he wandered over to a low munitions container and sat
down, trying to organise his thoughts. There were too many vying for
pride of place, however, and he found himself overwhelmed by the
tasks he was now facing. WEAPCO, Tyler, Mal, rescuing Ursula ...
Lying next to Chris on the container was a small spanner-like tool.
He picked it up, examining it for a time, before hurling it across
the hold in frustration. This was pointless; he should just give up
now and head back to Hail. He had bitten off far more than he could
chew.

“Why so glum?”

Chris became aware of a figure
moving gracefully in his direction, a flowing white dress just
brushing the floor, two sandalled feet briefly revealing themselves
with each step.

Athena stood in front of Chris for a
time, looking down at him, though he did not meet her eye. “Chris?”
she spoke again.

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“What about?”

“A lot of things.”

Athena moved around to his side,
sitting down next to him. She stared down at her own feet as Chris
gazed ahead without a word. “You can talk to me, you know,” she
said. “I
am
your friend.”

Friends? Oh, fantastic. Now the
thing thinks that we’re enjoying some sort of special relationship
together
. The Firefly still claimed to be sentient, capable of
reason, of self-awareness, of consciousness, of emotion. Chris
doubted that it could have any notion what the word ‘friend’
meant.

“I’m not sure you would
understand,” Chris said, hoping to fob Athena off.

“Try me,” she said.

“I’m struggling with second
thoughts,” Chris said, after further silence.

“You’re getting cold feet?”
Athena asked. “Do you not think you can do this?”

“I’m not sure,” Chris said. “I
thought it was going to be easy at first, but the deeper I go, the
more complex and difficult things become. WEAPCO is not the only
major force out there. There are others, who, even if only half as
bad as WEAPCO, still present a big problem. The task seems never
ending, like pushing the boulder to the top of the hill and watching
it roll down the other side. It will never just stay where you want
it.”