Phantom: A Tale From The Sonali War Page 2

  “Then you spend the rest of your lives in prison under the worst of circumstances,” she replies without batting an eyelid.

  4

  Jeremy

  I swallow hard. Even though the mission isn’t exactly difficult, the prospect of meeting any one of those Sonali people is daunting. I have heard of smugglers doing business with them, especially in the area of human trafficking for large scale human experimentation and selling them military hardware and information. All I have is ale. Maybe I can convince them it’s some sort of wonder drug to make super soldiers. I mean, these are aliens. They don’t know much about us, except that they want to annihilate us. All I need to do is to sell them the ale, sneaking in the explosive that way. And I am gone.

  I look No-One in the eyes and say, “We’ll do it.”

  My crew protests. I silence them with one look. I return my glace to No-One, soften my look, and say, “On one condition. You pay us for this run.”

  The lady sneers so much I begin to wonder at myself. “If it is money you want, we’ll double what you’re making. Just get the job done.”

  “Okay, then,” I say, happy once again. “We’ll do it.”

  The lady barks an order at the science officer. She orders the restraints to be taken off. As soon as I am freed from the restraints, I turn to see the trooper who has been hitting me. He is an impossibly muscular Caucasian with a rough, handsome face and a knife sharp look. He looks down at me with immense contempt, like I’m a vile worm in his eyes.

  “I apologize for Kyle,” No-One was saying. “He is not particularly fond of space pirates.”

  Kyle takes the opportunity to speak and all I hear is intense hatred. “I think you guys are the vermin of our existence.”

  I raise my eyebrow. “Whoa, okay, someone has some issues.” I notice his face redden with anger and take several steps back until I’m practically standing at No-One’s side. “I like to think of myself as a business person.”

  About five minutes later, a float platform is guided into the entrance bay. On it are five subcutaneous insertion devices that look like guns. Beside these devices is a silver briefcase.

  No-One picks up one of the guns and approach me. I take a step back and bump into Kyle, who is more than happy to grab me and hold me in place. No-One gives him the eye and he lets me go.

  No-One tells me, “It’s just nanites. It’s how we make sure you stay focused on the mission and don’t get ideas. It has a distance of about two light years, which is the maximum distance you should put between your ship and ours.”

  “Will you be following us?”

  She nods. “Just beyond the long range scanners of the Sonali ship. When we confirm the destruction of the ship, we will deactivate the nanintes and you will pee them out when next you pee. Then we will transfer your money and you’ll be heroes. If you fail, then you will go down as noble men.”

  “If we run?” this question is asked by Garret.

  No-One looks him in the eye when she delivers her reply. “Then we activate the nanites, blow your brains and your ship, and go find some more pirates.”

  We are all injected soon afterward. No-One hands me the briefcase, whishes me luck, and departs our space ship with most of her goon squad. Some engineers from the Cruiser are sent to help Bob repair the FTL. Bob is happy for all the help and spare parts he can get.

  During that time, I and Sibiu secrete the briefcase in one of the crates containing the ale. By the time I’m back in the bridge with Garret and Alex, our ship has been released from the tractor hold of the Cruiser and we have been given the coordinates of the planet, which is three light years away.

  “It’ll take us three days to get there,” Garret announces.

  Bob, who is patched in to the bridge from engineering, says, “The FTL drive is singing like a bird and ready to go.”

  “Thanks, Bob,” I say and cut the patch to engineering.

  “Is it worth it?” Alex asks. “I think we should take our chances and run away.”

  I shook my head in disagreement. “They’ll kill us with that long range switch they have on their ship.

  “That’s against Union regulations, Jeremy,” Garret says. “Even if they had such capability, they wouldn’t. They could get court marshaled for such act.”

  “These guys aren’t your average Union military,” I reply. “That lady was an intelligence officer. That ship is most probably a black ops outfit. Black ops outfits can do whatever the heck they want and get away with it. Plot a course to the coordinates we received.”

  “Course plotted,” Garret replies seconds later. “Ready to engage the FTL drive.”

  I relax back in my chair. “Engage.”

  5

  Jeremy

  Three days later, we fall out of faster than light travel with the sirens blaring. I see the huge ship in time to yell. “Evasive maneuvers!”

  Garret, whose hands I trust in situations like this, does not waste time to look for the threat that has alarmed me. He throws the stick to the left, causing the corvette to bank left. I am thrown off my Captain’s chairs. We dive just in time to escape the three flashes of laser fire that would have cut a hole right through our shields.

  “Sir,” Garret says, “we are being hailed by the ship.”

  I rise from the floor where I had been unceremoniously deposited by the lurching ship. Garret is smartly bringing us around to face the ship. It is a technological marvel, with fine angles and streamlined bulkheads that brilliantly reflects the light from the twin star at the center of the system.

  “We are also being vigorously scanned,” he announces.

  Garret brings us to a stop with just enough space between us to dive or bank in time to evade another laser blast. We are severely and outrageously dwarfed by the Sonali Star Destroyer. Its very presence casts a small but discernible shadow over the blue and green planet beneath us. We are to it a speck in the dust. I know I am exaggerating our size but that is how I feel.

  I say, “Open up a channel.”

  My view screen dissolves and fills with the image of a big, blue humanoid creature. It speaks its language, which the translator automatically translates in a flaccid tone.

  “Unidentified human ship,” the Sonali Captain is saying. “Prepare to be destroyed.”

  I have somehow managed to reach my Captain chair. I am standing in a rigid stance. Of course, the prospect of being destroyed isn’t sounding so good to my hearing.

  “My name is Captain Jeremy Black, Captain of The White Silk,” I say with my best, charming voice. “We mean you no harm.”

  “You mean us no harm, yet you jump into the system just behind us?” roars the Captain.

  I curse the Union navigator who had calculated the coordinates. I curse them and their entire generational line.

  I say, “We are sorry. We miscalculated. Anyways, we heard there might be a Sonali ship in the area so we decided to come check it out.”

  “Check it out?” the captain asks as though he couldn’t just figure out what that means.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I heard you might be giving big bucka for information, weapons, lab rats, and maybe that something that human soldiers take to make them super…”

  The captain looks a little more confused than I anticipate. He leans away from view to whisper to some unseen officer. Then he returns back to view with what I guess passes for a smile in Sonali. It is hideous by the way as it reveals denture that are less than stellar and could break the heart. I have never seen the Sonali this up close before, so I don’t know if this is the way their teeth naturally are or if this particular captain just needs to go see the dentist—more than once, though.

  “You a mercenary?” the captain asks. There is a little glint in his eyes. And the way his lips slide a little apart as though ready to sneer tells me he may be the greedy, cunning sort that wants any underhand advantage to lord it over his enemies. Greed is something I can take advantage of.

  “Well, I like to call mys
elf a business man,” I say. “I really don’t care for this war you got going with the Union. I just want to make my money and live my life. It matters little to me who wins…”

  “So, you a mercenary?” he asks again.

  You would think I have made an impression with my little speech there. I nod once.

  “I have enough humans to last me several years,” the captain says. “Also, our scans do not reveal any unusual energy reading that would suggest a sophisticated weapon that might interest me. I doubt if you have any human weapon I have not already acquired from other sorts like you. …”

  I begin to wonder if other sorts like me survived the encounter. I have been running smuggling runs along the border of the Outer Colonies for a long time, even before the war began. I know most of the hangouts. I talk to others. I network. I’m a businessman, dammit!

  And yet, I have never heard of any smuggler working with these dudes. But then again, smugglers tend to be solipsistic; I know I am.

  “But that drug you mentioned…” the Sonali whispers. “I may be interested in it.”

  “Yes,” I say. Then I begin to narrate what little knowledge I have of the Armada’s failed super soldier program—at least they say it failed. With these Armada military sorts, you never really do know until you are within their ranks. And even if you are within their ranks, you really can’t have access to that kind of information if you aren’t cleared.

  “I want every last drop you have,” the captain says with a defiant fist and a crooked smile. I almost faint because of his denture.

  After hashing out the price for the ale cum super soldier wonder drug, I say, “Also, I need assurance that you will not fire on us the moment you take delivery of our cargo.”

  “I will not. You have my word.”

  “Forgive me if I can’t take your word for it,” I say.

  “What will you have us do?”

  “I want you to power down your weapons system,” I say. “All the way down so that we can skedaddle the moment we get our money and give you the item.”

  The captain looks away and gives an order. There is a voice of rebellion in the background, which the captain silences with a sharp rebuke. Then he looks back at me.

  I glance at Alex, who, surprised, nods that the ship’s weapons system is powering down.

  “The money?” I ask. “How do you want to do it? Cash or transfer?”

  “I’ll send the money with the away ship,” he says. “They’ll dock with you immediately.” The connection is broken.

  I tap the engineering button and say, “Bob, get us ready to jump to light speed.”

  “Aye, boss,” comes his chirpy reply.

  “Garret, when I give the signal, get ready to jump to Phantom’s position. They are hiding behind one of the moons at the edge of the system.”

  Garret nods.

  I ride the elevator down to the cargo hold, where Sibiu is standing over seventeen crates of contraband ale and an explosive.

  “They are sending an away ship,” I say to him. “Let’s get these crates into the entrance bay.”

  We do just that. By the time we are done, we step all the way back to the small access way to the cargo hold and wait. The away ship docks with our ship and the hatch slides up. Only one Sonali appears with a large sack, which I suppose is filled with cash.

  He sees the crates, then sees us staring at him. He drops the cash sack in the middle of the entrance bay and methodically moves the crates into the away ship. This takes him about thirty minutes. All the time we are watching him do it and he never looks at us one more time. Neither does he look at us as he shuts the hatch and undocks his ship.

  After confirming that the sack is indeed packed with freshly minted Union platinum plated hard currency, I run back into the elevator and ride it up to the bridge. I arrive just in time to watch the large ship swallow up the away ship in one of its huge bays.

  “Their weapons are coming online and fast,” Alex yells.

  “Garret, get us out of here!” I boom.

  I feel a sharp kick which throws me into the air. Before I slam into the ground I see as the space around us fold in itself.

  I glance at Alex and nod.

  Alex presses a button.

  “Bring us out,” I tell Garret.

  We drop out just in time to watch, through the long range telescope, the Sonali ship explode in an immense, almost glorious flare of orange and yellow.

  “We did it…,” Alex mutters, a bit unsure. Once the explosion vanishes, we see what is left of the ship, a sea of debris and bodies. I am chilled by the fact that I have probably just slaughtered a thousand sentient beings.

  “Captain,” Alex says, “No-One is hailing us.”

  “On screen,” I say, taking my best posture by the Captain’s chair.

  She is all smiles and I can hear cheers and jubilation on her ship’s bridge. “Congratulations, Captain Jeremy. You and your crew are heroes. Your money will be wired to you shortly and your charges have been dropped.” She pauses for a while. “We could use men like you in our ranks.”

  I shake my head. “Thanks, but I really don’t like working for spooks.”

  No-One draws a blank. She neither denies nor confirms my assertion. “Thanks again. Desist from running contrabands along the border. You may not be so lucky next time.” The super-hot commander vanishes from the screen, leaving me wondering how my close brush with death at the hands of the Sonali counts as being lucky.

  Want to Read More?

  Explore more of the Pax Aeterna universe in the novel, The Seeker, available now on Amazon.

  About the Author

  Life-long sci-fi nerd living in Austin, Texas, Trevor Wyatt cut his teeth on the works of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, eventually moving on to everything from Star Wars to Futurama.

  He discovered his love of writing during college and has written off and on for the last ten years.

  His novel, The Seeker is the first in the Pax Aeterna universe.

  You can reach him at trevor@paxaeternapress.com.

  Thanks for reading.

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