Interlude F

  Vilden Smath stood in one of the smaller bays of the vast covered expanse that was Kacke spaceport watching the sleek Courier Vessel Greased Lightning land. He nervously adjusted the mask that covered the lower half of his face and hid the badly drawn mustache, waiting for whoever thought they were important enough to divert an official Corporate Courier from its duties. Diverting a Courier vessel was a big deal. Normally they didn’t even stop to change crews and maintenance was carried out en-route. Only the direct authorisation from Board Level could bring a Courier Vessel to a planet’s surface and as the systems served by the Courier would have no official communication for several days it was not something that was done lightly.

  A door cracked open on the vessel’s underside as umbilicals snaked out to connect to various orifices and maintenance bots swarmed around the engines. A light-skinned man stepped out, waved to the crew, took in his surroundings, saw Vilden and smiled widely in greeting. Vilden’s eyes went wide but made no other sign he was greeting the Deputy Director Galen Smath of Sahara Galactic, one of the twenty most powerful humans in the Galaxy.

  “Welcome back to Jeckon, uncle,” Vilden said as he returned the Deputy Director’s hug awkwardly. Whilst the Deputy Director was technically Vilden’s uncle, albeit with a great many greats appended, Vilden had never advertised the fact he was related to the Deputy Director who, even through the mask, smelt of sweat and alcohol.

  “Why, thank you Vilden, I must say it’s all changed since I was last here, although that was before the revolution.”

  “It has, sir, shall we go somewhere a bit quieter…” Vilden said, motioning to the exit as a massive ship passed overhead. It was playing the theme tune to Centauri Dawn, almost drowning out the roar of its anti-grav engines. The Deputy Director looked up and Vilden was looking at his face at just the right time to catch the look of fear on his face.

  “Is everything okay?” Vilden asked, then he recognised the ship. It was the Hawk’s former flagship, the Pi=3, one of the stars of Centauri Dawn. It was a distinctive ship and that was putting it kindly. It looked like the Hawk had taken three random ships built by three separate species and welded them together to make one hideously ugly vessel. Up close it looked even more disreputable than it had done in the series.

  “Let’s just get inside,” the Deputy Director said and the two of them passed through security, the Deputy Director having to show his passport before being allowed to exit the vast artificial cavern into a less noisy but still busy pedestrian area, Vilden led his uncle through the crowds to the station where they managed to get a train carriage to themselves, the crowds all seemed to be heading in the opposite direction.

  “Do I not warrant a limo?” the Deputy Director asked, sitting down heavily and looking out the window with interest as the train pulled out the platform.

  “There’s no private transport of any kind here, not unless you really want to attract attention,” Vilden pointed out.

  “I think the ship sailed on my anonymity when I ordered the Courier Vessel to land here. Not that I mind slumming it… Oh my, they’ve actually roofed the whole canyon, that is quite spectacular. Did you know some nutter once flew a D-Wing freighter down the canyon,” the Deputy Director said.

  “Did they manage to fly it out again?” Vilden asked as the Deputy Director attempted to look relaxed as he took in the view. Vilden wasn’t fooled for a second. Something was up. Senior Board members didn’t just turn up on your doorstep without warning. Or their entourage.

  “Apparently yes, although back in the day there was one of the Grey’s flying saucers stuck in the canyon wall. Not that those lanky fuckers can fly worth a damn,” Vilden suppressed a wince. You expected that sort of prejudice from the less educated, not from a Deputy Director, even if he had made his name in the Zarathian wars. Not that Vilden planned to call him out on it. His career was on thin ice as it was.

  “It’s still there, it’s right in the middle of the retail district now,” Vilden settled for saying.

  “Must be the only thing around here that hasn’t changed. How are the natives? I hear they’re friendly?”

  “Friendly in Kacke, much less so in the Outback, especially if they find out who you work for,” Vilden said. The Deputy Director laughed.

  “Yes, I saw your report. It’s a good thing there’s not even enough of them to even make up a demographic. And don’t worry lad, you weren’t the first of us to offer the Hawk a job.”

  “You’ve had dealings with him too?”

  “Yeah, back around fifteen years before they froze the fucker, we thought we’d bring him to our side by offering him rejuvenation, after all, he was getting on a bit for a normie, and the prestige of not only having neutralised the Hawk but having him command our fleet would have been massive.”

  “I didn’t know Sahara Galactic had a fleet,” Vilden said, the Deputy Director shifted uncomfortably.

  “That’s because that backstabing fucker and his Neko bitch stole it. He didn’t even wait to be rejuved, not that we had any intention of letting the fucker live longer than we had to. The cover up we had to do to hide the loss from our shareholders was massive.

  “I can imagine,” Vilden said, not quite believing what he was hearing.

  “It actually saved us money in the long term. Keeping an entire fleet battle ready is really fucking expensive. So, what are the young ladies like here in Kacke?” Vilden swallowed, trying not to look like he’d heard the second most senior member of his Corporation admit to the biggest cover up in Sahara Galactic’s history. And in an obviously monitored public place too. Jeckon Intelligence could probably hear the Deputy Director clearer than he could.

  “I met a woman who’d dyed herself green the other day…” Vilden managed to say which kept the conversation going until the train arrived at the embassy station. For Vilden, the journey couldn’t end soon enough.

  The two men walked into the embassy through a discreet entrance where they just happened to bump into the Ambassador who just so happened to be hanging around reception. Vilden made low key formal introductions before the ambassador whisked them both up to her office and dismissed her staff. Vilden stayed because he didn’t seem to have been dismissed. He stood self consciously in front of the doors taking up the pose of a guard, very aware that no-one had given a thought to disarming him. Or maybe the scanners just hadn’t picked up his concealed pistol.

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  “What’s going on Gilen, why are you here? And why have you commandeered our Courier Vessel to come here?” the Ambassador asked bluntly the second the doors to her office slammed shut. In contrast to the summer-like conditions on the floors below, the office was lit purely by the little natural light that made it through the storm outside. The Deputy Director flung himself down on a sofa and sighed, suddenly looking stressed and tired.

  “Nutexas Habitat is gone,” he said.

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “Nutexas Habitat is no more, it’s been vaporised, annihilated, explosively disassembled. It has ceased to be, it is an ex habitat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m fucking sure. I saw it go pop with my own eyes. It’s all gone.”

  “What happened?”

  “What has happened is the only fucking rejuv facility is gone, as is pretty much every Corporate bank. We need to drain our Nutexas based Corporate bank accounts here and dump it all into our Jeckon holdings before word gets out. We do have holdings on Jeckon don’t we?”

  “Of course we have holdings on Jeckon, Gilen,” the Ambassador said calmly, her face a mask.

  “Hmmph, good. Real estate I take it?”

  “You can’t buy property here. The smart money on Jeckon is in spaceships.”

  “Fucking commies. Okay, buy spaceships, but buy ‘em quick. It’s all a Free System conspiracy I tell you. They’ve nuked Nutexas station… I mean habitat, the Hawk and his Neko bitch are loose and just now that fucking abortion of his battleship has just landed here on Kacke.”

  “A Free System conspiracy?” Really, Gilen, you are hardly being rational. And you can’t just buy spaceships on Jeckon, it’s a complicated process,” the Ambassador said calmly.

  “What do you mean I’m not rational, how else do you explain what’s happening? Don’t you understand that NuTexas is GONE! And what do you mean you can’t just buy spaceships. This fucking planet’s full of them.” The Deputy Director brought up a display on his wrist com showing a hologram of a spaceship shaped bump in the snow highlighted in red with a price tag of twenty million. He tapped on the ‘Buy It Now’ button.

  “There, see, we now own a fully operational spaceship.”

  “You mean you’ve just given an unknown, unverified seller twenty million. You bloody idiot, have you even checked that ship exists? That the seller actually owns it? And if it does actually exist you need to check it hasn't been stripped bare and that it is actually operational?” The Ambassador said, her contempt palpable. The Deputy Director jumped to his feet and slammed his fists down on the Ambassador’s desk making her jump.

  “Don’t call me an idiot, bitch. I’m the Deputy Director of this Corporation, the fucking power behind the throne. I just need to say a few words and everybody in this embassy disappears.”

  “If the situation is as serious as you are saying, this is no time to argue amongst ourselves. Why were you going to Nutexas anyway?” the Ambassador asked.

  “You know very well I was going to Nutexas for rejuv… Which I don’t need and it was only insisted on by the board. Just because we’ve had a bit of a run of bad luck. There’s nothing wrong with my mind… I have proof Nutexas is gone, you know,” the Deputy Director shouted, rubbing his wrist com. The Ambassador glanced nervously at Vilden.

  “Please Gillen, calm down. Did you come straight here from Nutexas without even a bodyguard?”

  “I know what you people are saying, that my last rejuv didn’t take. Well, no-one’s getting rejuved any more. And just because I don’t have my bodyguards with me doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself. And for publicly calling me an idiot, you’re finished. I don’t even know why we allowed someone like you rejuvenation.” The Deputy Director yelled, then winked at Vilden, pulled out a compact pistol, and without warning fired it at the Ambassador, he missed, blowing a hole in the window behind her. A blast of freezing wind swept into the office as the Ambassador dived behind her desk.

  The Deputy Director tried to shoot through the desk and failed, making a scorch mark that would no doubt cost a fortune to remove. Vilden suddenly realised it was up to him to stop this madness, pulled out his pistol and shot the Deputy Director in the back. The Deputy Director spun around to face Vilden, raised his gun, then fell backwards as his brain finally realised his heart had stopped. Vilden ran over to the body, grabbed the former Deputy Director’s wrist com and, as he’d been trained to, quickly changed wrist com’s allegiance to himself.

  “He’s dead, you can come out.” Vilden called. The Ambassador stood up from behind the desk and looked down at the rapidly cooling remains of the Deputy Director lying on her office floor and shivered.

  “Fuck. That escalated quickly.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t react quicker Ma’am.”

  “Wasn’t he your uncle?”

  “A very distant great uncle. Today was the first time he ever talked to me,” Vilden admitted. The Ambassador smiled thinly.

  “Distancing yourself already? Not that I blame you. I’d heard he was a bit unstable but I had no idea he was that bad. What the hell was he saying about Neutexas Habitat. Was he having a flashback to the war?”

  “Umm, no Ma’am. It looks like he filmed this from his wrist com.” Vilden brought up footage that looked like the Deputy Director had been playing on a loop. It had been filmed from the sumptuous bridge of what must have been the Deputy Director’s private yacht. What must have been hundreds, if not thousands of distress calls shone on the coms screen, but it was the oversized main screen that caught Vilden and the Ambassador's attention. The yacht was approaching Nutexas habitat, its domes sparkling against the background of the planet. The captain was wearily having a conversation with an AI who kept denying the yacht permission to land as the habitat was being evacuated due to ‘a significant threat.’

  Then, suddenly, the station wasn’t there, just a cloud of glittering debris expanding at unbelievable speeds. After a few moments of stunned silence on board the yacht, the Deputy Director ordered the Captain to turn around and rendezvous with the next Sahara Galactic Courier vessel.

  “Holy shitting fuck,” the ambassador swore.

  “That’s not all, while we were travelling on the train here, the Deputy Director admitted to concealing a massive asset loss from the shareholders.”

  “What does that have to do with that…” the Ambassador asked, waving at the looped video.

  “Well, Ma’am, we are going to need to make a case against the Deputy Director. His incompetence isn’t just a recent thing. After witnessing what happened at Nutexas he should have immediately returned to Headquarters and notified the Board. Not come here to strip the Corporate accounts.”

  “I hate to inform you of this, Vilden, but every member of the Board has concealed massive asset losses from the shareholders at some point.”

  “Not like this. He gave our entire fleet to the Hawk.”

  “What fleet? We don’t have a fleet. We haven’t had a fleet since… Oh. The fucker. And he admitted this to you?”

  “On the train, so we can assume Jeckon Intelligence knows.”

  “That isn’t good. Did he mention Nutexas on the train?”

  “He kept quiet about that.”

  “Thank fuck. So, we are probably the only two people on the planet who know about Nutexas,” the Ambassador said, looking at Vilden. She was visibly shaking. With a shock Vilden realised he was still holding his pistol. He holstered it and the Ambassador breathed a sigh of relief, her breath visible in the freezing air.

  “What do we do now?” Vilden asked.

  “For a start, we need to get out of here before we freeze to death, then… I don’t know. I suppose we better tell the Board,” the Ambassador replied, Vilden glanced down at the former Deputy Director’s now unsecured wrist com. A notification from a reputable ship broker flashed up saying payment had been received and Sahara Industries now had another spaceship to add to their proud fleet, together with a list of fees they’d charge for storage.

  “Actually, I have an idea,” Vilden said.

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