The giant blue sun occupied the entire span of
sergeant Foster's gunboat cockpit window. Its light cast an
eerie white glow devoid of shadow about the interior of his ship.
Comfortable behind sun goggles, he absently sipped at the straw of
his Tift-2 standard issue nutritional supplement. His attention
was directed not at the sun or its searing glow but at a large black
oval blemish seemingly on its surface. In stark contrast to the
withering light of the sun, it was devoid of any light whatsoever.
Actually tens of millions of kilometers away from the suns aura, this
was the space-time Lens he and two dozen other cavalry gunboats were
assigned to monitor. The Lens, one of over two hundred
scattered around Pansenate territory, was designated S-355. It
facilitated deep space travel between the inner planets and the very
edge of the Pansenate frontier. Up-spin from the Lens, five
days away at hyper-light speed was the border of Ganit territory.
A priceless piece of technology, the Lens represented Pansenate rule
at the farthest reaches of civilization, and merited the cavalry’s
close supervision of interstellar commerce through it. S-355
was also a special subject of attention because it was located just
days away from the Pansenate border instead of the more customary
habit of putting lenses much deeper into Pansenate space.
Eighteen gunboats were arranged in a gauntlet leading away from the
sun and Lens. The remaining gunboats clustered in three nearby
groups ready to pursue anyone foolish enough to challenge the
gauntlet and lucky enough to escape it's many plasma cannon.
Suddenly, the dark interior of the Lens shimmered
and sprang to life with the customary glowing maroon swirl pool of a
time-shift wave. In seconds, a large ship appeared traveling
out of the wave, trailing the green and blue wake of a disrupted
gravity field until it was well away from the Lens. As suddenly
as it appeared, the wave faded and the Lens returned to it's void
rest.
Sergeant Foster put down his drink and ran his
finger down the arrival panel until he found the entry he sought.
“Lafayette, approach checkpoint S-355 and
transmit clearance number, cargo and destination”, he droned into
his microphone.
The ship’s flat black composite armor sucked
greedily at the suns bright glare, reflecting no light as it silently
glided into the gauntlet. This made its general silhouette,
cockpit windows, weapons turrets and sensor enclosures very hard to
distinguish at a distance. The sergeant removed his sun goggles
and squinted. The Lafayette slowly drew near sergeants ship,
coming to a full stop about 300 hundred meters away. Now he
could see it was a huge bulk freighter, a semi-truck of deep space.
This one lacked the bright logos and huge, happy,
we’re-a-company-you-want-to-do-business-with slogans on it’s
sides common to corporate liners. It was the ship of a
freelancer, an almost illegal rouge of the space lines. Sgt.
Foster made a mental note. A summary transit authorization
wouldn’t do for this fellow. I’ll have to take a look at
this guy with the scanner, he thought.
A long, tall, narrow rectangular hull supported
the ships main engines. The supply bay, maintenance bay, and
living area along with navigation, scanners and weapons were a
collection of squat, boxy enclosures scattered about the hull forward
of the engines. A small shuttle bay was located below the
cockpit on the underside of the angled nose. The Lafayette was
a little over one hundred meter’s long, able to carry 500 metric
tons of cargo. The frontier could be a very dangerous place and
its many weapons turrets made it as deadly as any warship and warned
all it was not a ship to deal with in deep space. Two cargo
rails extended from the underside of the hull on either side of the
ship. Theses carried four battered cargo pods, each sporting
the faded green and red logo of the long dead Has-Tracts Frontier
Corporation. It was a beautiful ship in a sinister way, in
spite of being over eighty years old. As the Lafayette powered
down, the sergeant noticed with mild curiosity, its five new 1200X
Tele-Spax engines.
The ships pilot, Montana Taurus said into his
headset, “Freighter Lafayette. CL Number 2782. Mining
supplies headed for Ganit 03RY.”
Sergeant Foster directed his interior
scanner at the Lafayette. He slowly examined the ship's cargo
pods. His display revealed nothing unusual.
“Transit Authorization granted, have a safe
trip”, he sneered. Regretfully there was no reason to shake
this one down.
Taurus said, “Thanks. Catch you on the
return trip. Lafayette out.”
Taurus entered several navigation codes into the
computer and activated the auto-pilot then he set the scanners on
long range and opened the throttles before relaxing in his chair.
Nort, his mechanic and long time friend entered the cockpit and took
the chair next to him.
“Anything notable about the checkpoint?” asked
Nort.
“No trouble. The jammers did the job.
You know, Hajkin electronics are magicians at hiding things.”
The Lafayettes clandestine cargo consisted of tons
of heavy weapons destined for 03RY, a recently settled Ganit colony
currently being fought over by two powerful Ganit government clans,
the Farsei and the Bondov. Intended for the Farsei, the weapons
would allow the Ganit to better indulge their favorite pastime,
namely blowing each other to oblivion during the course of their
endlessly convoluted squabbles.
Nort nodded his agreement on the effectiveness of
jammers as he accessed the engineering computer to check on the
engines.
“Everything’s working fine”, he said after
studying the display.
“Keep an eye on the coupler temperature on three
and five. I’m not sure we’ve got computer handling it right
yet”, said Taurus.
“OK.”
Nort looked at the young Human sitting next to
him. The spindly child he'd known since he was two had grown
into a formidable man much like his father. Taurus was tall and
slender but sinewy with taunt muscle. His face was a collection
of etched angles with a narrow chin and high cheekbones broken on the
left side by a long, ragged scar. He was quick to smile but a
dangerous spark in his manner let all know that when humor left him
he wasn't one you would want to stand in the way of. His
clothes reflected the covert nature of his profession. Taurus
wore an unassuming baggy dark green shirt and loose black pants but
hidden within their many folds were the paraphernalia of a gunrunner;
throwing disks, knifes, an emergency med pack, several small
grenades, a backup pistol and a tiny comm-unit transceiver.
Around his waist hung the massive magnetico-combustion, or MC pistol
Nort had constructed for him. Longer, heavier and much deadlier
than the particle weapons preferred by most on the frontier, it could
pierce even heavy body armor. Many foes had experienced
unpleasant and painful surprise as their final emotion because of
that pistol.
A pang of sadness ran through Nort as he
remembered that the MC pistol he'd made Taurus's father Kerry had
failed to save him at the Bav Nebula when he was double crossed by
the Sakti. When Nort found him, Kerry was mortally wounded and
barely conscious. His last concerns were about his son.
Before he died, he asked Nort to watch after Taurus. Nort
honored Kerry with a warriors last rites after the manner of his
people and made good his promise to remain Taurus's companion.
Just sixteen, Kerry's death hardened Taurus into a man. Taurus
swore revenge and saw his vow to its end before he turned eighteen.
As his father before him, Taurus cared little for
the mediocre order and insulated existence of the inner worlds.
Taurus’ mother had died of illness not long after Taurus was born;
save Nort, he had no ties to attend, so he remained on the frontier
to drift among the subject worlds of the mighty Pansenate.
After a time he took up gunrunning, an extremely risky but very
profitable profession that fulfilled Taurus’ sense of adventure and
allowed him to indulge with state of the art technology his most
coveted possession, the Lafayette.
“What're you so thoughtful about?” asked
Taurus noticing Nort’s scrutiny.
Nort just smiled and returned his attention to the
engineering panel, “These new engines-- they’re efficient.
I think maybe you managed a good deal”, he joked.
“Deal?” huffed Taurus, “You know what price
I got'em at.”
Nort chuckled, “It’s always money, isn’t
it?”
Taurus didn't bother to answer. Neither man
was very concerned with it but it remained that Nort had little use
for money and believed all humans, including Taurus, concerned
themselves with it too much and too often. The two lapsed into
a comfortable silence as was the custom for the two old friends
contented with each others company.
The pair attended to ships functions for a while
then Taurus turned on the Pansenate Issue-Computer. Taurus
scanned the display as items up for vote were listed. Nort soon
followed suit on a similar display beside his seat.
For Humans the Pansenate was a true democracy.
Instead of elective representation, every Human in the Pansenate was
a member of its ruling body, the Senate, and had a vote. Gone
was the apathy of the ancient republics. Everyone was a
political activist, each citizen was a potential diplomat, all high
and low were politicians, everyone was a lobbyist. All Humanity
took an active role in the day to day activities of the empire and
all belonged to one or more of the numerous political parties.
The executive branch of the government was headed by a thirteen
member Politburo elected by the Pansenate to a ten year term.
Humans were very proud of their democracy.
Indeed, many could be called arrogant about it. Unfortunately
political power was extended only to Humans. The subject worlds
were represented in the Senate by native delegations but they had no
voting power. The “best interests” of the scores of
non-Human species in the Pansenate were made by officials appointed
by Humans. Still, much of Humanity saw their government as
vastly superior to the military complex that ruled the Tone Empire or
the to the Mafia Clans that ran the Ganit. Taurus counted
himself among the minority who told themselves they knew better.
It was some in this minority who looked out for the subject worlds
and kept life for the luckiest of the conquered somewhere near
acceptable. Sadly, even with the aid of concerned benefactors
life was pathetic for many species, especially on those worlds of
high economic import to the Pansenate. Humans were known for
their ruthless exploitation of planets where e-bills could be made or
that were unfortunate enough to have some exceptional technological
value, such as Nort’s home world, Maharl.
The issues scrolled past on Taurus’s display.
‘Inggar Colonization Act’, ‘Funding for Nikon Class Destroyer
Procurement’, ‘Poco Flour Import Allotments’, ‘Holbard
Immigration Act’.
Each issue had links to the wording of the
legislation, various lobby dissertations, promoting arguments,
opposition arguments, statistics, and speeches by concerned
Senators. Each man stopped his display occasionally to examine
a topic in greater depth, skipping the issues he wasn’t
particularly interested in.
Taurus stopped the readout as the ‘Shi-Arik’A
Export Agreement’ crossed his screen and called it up.
“Well hell. They’re trying rape
Shi-Arik’A. Another world’s gonna bite the dust.”
Nort glanced at Taurus and keyed in a request on
his terminal for the details of the Act. Taurus shared his
voting power freely with Nort. Indeed, Nort made the decision
on a vote as often as often as Taurus did.
“They want to drain the Fal Sea there and export
it for its high mineral content”, Nort said in disgust. He
called up statistics, “Second largest inland sea on the
planet. Damn, it’ll leave hardly any water reserves.
Devastate global weather too, I imagine. I wonder if the bill
can be blocked”, he pondered.
“Let’s see”, said Taurus examining the
display for lobbyist’s and parties for and against, “Well, looks
like it’ll be a close call. We’ll have to keep an eye on
it. Maybe we can help if we call in a favor or two. I
don’t know if we can do any good but well give it a shot.”
He thought a moment then scrolled the display
back. He stopped the screen at ‘Poco Flour Import
Allotments’. Poco Flour was one of the Ganit’s major
exports to the Pansenate.
“You know, we might be able to come up with
something over this Poco Flour legislation. He looked through
list of parties opposing and promoting the issue and then at the list
of concerned Senators.”
“See anything?” asked Nort.
“Well”, Taurus replied, “I see Dr. Klein
Araman of the Lockery Party is singing up for it.
“We can work with him. He certainly was
grateful for the work you did on Allbright for the Lockery’s.”
“Yea. I’ll send him a message offering
our services.”
“Are you going to tell him about the Shi-Arik’A
legislation now or wait for a reply”
“Now. No use batting around the about it.
I’ll make it a stipulation for our offer to help.”
“Good."
Taurus turned to the long range comm display and
keyed in a message.
Hmmm, said Taurus, “Says here the Lockery’s
are still using KR-176 encryption. I thought there were
security issues about that method.”
“Yea, so did I, but you know the inner worlds
don’t pay as much attention to encryption as we do out here.”
“Well, hell. If we want to talk to them we
have to use it.” Taurus turned back to the comm unit and sent
the message off.
He and Nort were soon back studying current issues
and legislation. Several hours passed before they finished.
The day wore on as the Lafayette traveled at hyperlight speed towards
Ganit territory. After a time Nort left the cockpit for his
machine shop in the depths of the ship. Taurus busied himself
attending to the ships needs for a while then retired to his
quarters.
Late the next day the Nort was sitting in the
ships small galley sipping Fas tea from his home world.
Presently Taurus walked in carrying a small box. Imprinted on
it’s top in blue stylized lettering was the word ‘Intel’.
Taurus sat down and opened the box. Inside were four small
black cubes each about 3cm across. He began to inspect each
one.
Nort glanced at the box. “Your new
processors?” he asked.....
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