Of my meeting the commander

[Nigel_Strange]

I was on leave from the Tallison conflict. The battle there had been raging for weeks now, always the same, always. I had 48 hours to enjoy the finest luxuries that a military pilot could afford, which I worked out to be about five pints of low-grade ersatz beer, a cheap motel on the edge of Sapphire’s industrial area, and company for the evening.

After the dust settled upon landing, I hopped out of my Ferret and headed toward the nearest space-port bar when I saw a strange sight: a man with an airbrush was painting scorch marks on the body of an Evoch. He somehow sensed my curiosity, even though his back was turned, whereupon he swiveled around, removed the large cigar hanging from his mouth, and treated me to a mischievous grin from beneath his handlebar moustache.

“What are you doing?� I asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m painting scorch marks on this Evoch,� came his reply.

“Care to explain?�

“I’m working mercenary for now, and I need these scorch marks to prove my value.�

“I’m not convinced.�

“I’ll explain in the bar, if you care to join me. I’ll even buy you a drink.�

He then got all his gear together and we headed to the bar. The place was busy, but somehow he managed to secure for us a table in the back. Through the haze of smoke, he leaned forward and confided in me.

“Have you ever tried to hire a mercenary pilot?� he asked.

“I’m in the Alliance military: we don’t need mercenaries,� I boasted.

“Right right. Well, suppose you were in the shipping business, and you wanted to hire an escort. There are two ships available. Who would you go with, the pilot with the ship that has nary a scratch on her, or the one that looks like she’s taken a good licking and come out of it? I would wager on the latter, because who knows what snot-nosed kid might be out for his first day adventuring in his daddy’s ship? If you’ve got a ship that’s seen some action, and now we’re talking. You see? Half the battle with mercenary work: marketing.�

I then remembered visiting starports on several occasions and being amazed at how many mercenaries would be waiting in the docks, floating listlessly in their stale cockpits, sporting week-old beards and hungry expressions. When a rich merchant arrived, they would unbuckle themselves and jump around in their sweaty leather jackets and hold up cardboard signs offering prices and the occasional adjective. Some were “Deadly,� while others were “Reliable.� Their whole lot seemed rather pathetic to the career military man.

“Now, what if you’re so good, that, although you’ve seen battle after battle, you just never get hit?� he continued. “You soar above the fray, deploying countermeasures, jibing, weaving in and out of enemy fire…but the enemy never comes close to making a solid hit. Maybe a few glances off the shield, but nothing powerful enough to scratch the hull.�

“Nobody’s that good,� I countered.

“My point exactly. You would not believe any pilot capable of that level of skill, that level of grace, and that level of extraordinary situational awareness unless you witnessed it with your own eyes. You’d definitely want that pilot wouldn’t you? But the ship doesn’t have that rugged appearance of a seasoned veteran…so, such a pilot would need some cosmetic embellishment.�

“Are you saying that you’re so good that you never get scratched in battle?�

“Well, I wouldn’t actually say anything of the sort…� he trailed off, leaving the obvious implication dangling tangibly in the air.

“I don’t know…Maybe...� I said in the most noncommittal tone possible.

“That’s the spirit,� he said. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my surrendering the argument or the fact that the beers had just arrived. He immediately seized one tankard and began to drink. After a few swallows, he set it down with a loud thump and proffered his hand.

“Captain Devious, at your service.�

“With a name like that, I’m surprised I’ve never heard of you,� I said.

“Well, it’s not my real name,� he vouchsafed. “Actually, it’s Tedious, but I prefer Devious.�

“I see. Well, still, I think I would remember a name like that. The mercenary world isn’t that big. I think I would have heard of you, unless you’re a rookie.�

“Rookie, hmm? What’s the most important element in a battle?� he asked, changing the subject.

“I guess it would-�

“Surprise!� exclaimed, simultaneously seizing my own tankard (which I had scarcely touched) and throwing its contents straight into my face. I didn’t even have time to duck. When I had wiped the beer out of my face, my associate had vanished. The bar exploded in raucous laughter. After a few seconds, the waiter came over and presented me with the tab, which reminded me that the good Captain had originally offered to buy me the drink.

Amid the laughs of the rest of the bar, I ran out the door, the waiter trailing me with the tab shouting pathetically for me to come back and pay it. When I got outside, I just caught a glimpse of a Wraith taking to the air before I lost it against the sun. A wind warmed from its afterburners blew off my hat and I stood confused long enough for the waiter to catch up and foist the tab on me.

I reluctantly paid the bill and added a tip to compensate for running the waiter all the way out to the landing area. Filled with resentment and frustration, I was climbing aboard my Ferret when I managed to catch sight of another pilot yelling angrily about someone having shot up his Evoch. He was apparently too drunk to see that the scorch marks were just painted on.

So, that was my first encounter with the nefarious Captain Devious.


[Edited on 3-22-2009 by Nigel_Strange]

[Ali Fish]

[49rTbird]

lol

[tha_rami]

Haha, great stuff!

[Nigel_Strange]

Thanks. I might write more episodes later.

[Nigel_Strange]

Talison Conflict: day 322.

After weeks of surviving engagement after engagement, I had so many Vonari kills to my name that I was finally awarded the rank of Lieutenant, and qualified for the assignment of the vaunted Evoch-C class starfighter. I had been anticipating the event for some time, and had been saving my credits for installing all of the best components: repair system, Banshee cannons, and shield augmenter. It is at this point where I must confess that my military salary could not nearly afford all of these necessities, but the money was obtained through a lucrative black market economy, which I did dabble in. I rationalized this by the fact that, were it not for the best technology money could by, I would not have survived my first engagement, so, by moving goods of a less-than-legal nature, I was able to offset the guilt by protecting our worlds from the Vonari invasion. I am convinced that Alliance Command was fully aware of these illegal activities, but they turned a blind eye to it, so, we benefited from the better weapons and they benefited from plausible deniability. I noticed most pilots had also augmented their craft with upgrades that were obviously beyond current mil-spec issue. The ones that didn’t either perished early, or stayed in the rear with the carriers.

I still remember the first time I climbed into the cockpit. The moment the hatch closed and sealed, I gunned the throttle and felt myself pressed deep into the cushions of the seat. The sheer thrill of acceleration never really wore off. I spent the day skimming the atmosphere of Emerald and making a big point of landing it conspicuously in starports where I had noticed a preponderance of beautiful women. The only thing I was afraid of was enjoying the flight too much and losing situational awareness. I resolved to remove the cushions from the seat after that first flight, but never actually got around to it. In retrospect, the very cushions under my bum might have changed the course of my life, and possibly the course of history. It seems so odd, now that I think of it. That’s the beautiful strangeness of hindsight.

My first battle in the Evoch was eye-opening. It was as nimble as a wraith, but had slightly better armor. My one complaint about it was that it presented a bigger target from the dorsal and ventral surfaces. I found this out when my wings got shot up on day 324. I was closing on a Vonari fighter, feeling the thrill of acceleration once again. I was pumping energy into weapons at the expense of shields because I thought I had an easy kill. However, my situational awareness must have lagged, because the next thing I knew, before I could pull the trigger, those cushions were vibrating and rocking beneath me as the spray of Vonari cannons played on my soft underbelly. The shields were down in a second, and for a few seconds my ship was rolling in response to the withering cannons, tossed about like a leaf on the wind.

Even with the repair system fully engaged, my shields were down, my navigation computer was on the fritz, and my afterburners were nonfunctional. I tried the jumpdrive, but I knew it would be out as well: when the afterburners are down, you can be pretty sure the jumpdrive is out too. In short, I was a sitting duck. My beautiful Evoch was a mangled mess and I was staring down the twin barrels of some Vonari attack ship. It wasn’t even a heavy class fighter, but some little scout ship, but even that could finish me off without too much trouble. I had my hand pressed against the eject button, ready for that volley of death to ruin my once-stunning ship.

When one faces the immediate prospect of death, the mind seems to go in strange directions. There is a clear and sharp focus on the here and now, and a kind of lengthening in the perception of time. Everything slows down. At the same time, part of the mind seems to drift far away, as if to escape before the body is turned into a few pounds of ash and a whiff of hydrogen. I remember the one thought that passed through my mind at the time. I still laugh about it: “Money can’t buy happiness, but on Onyx, it will buy you a wife.�

As this bizarre thought crossed my mind, a shadow crossed my windscreen. I looked up to see a wraith diving out of the sun, lasers, cannons, and Excalibers all a-blazing. Over the radio, I heard a vaguely familiar voice exclaim: “Surprise!� The Vonari scout ship was gone, and I drifted off into unconsciousness.

***

[Nigel_Strange]

Well, I didn’t exactly drift into unconsciousness, though I think the story works better that way. In fact, my ship drifted for a few hours while I sweated it out angrily in my cockpit while Captain Devious and his friends mopped up, but I prefer to tell it like I slipped into unconsciousness. I can now tell how it really happened because it really doesn’t matter anymore.

When my repair system finally got my ship into working order, I pulled into the system’s starbase to let the pit crew hammer out the remaining dings. My Evoch (which I fatuously named Eve, thinking myself clever at the time) was still sound and would still fly. I saw the good Captain’s wraith parked there as well. It was painted matte black, except for some nose art of a sexy female harlequin bent slightly forward with a finger to her lips. The ship’s name was Careless Whisper. When I entered the bar, I found the nefarious Captain Devious sitting at a table, drinking and retelling the stories of his latest glorious battle. The rest of the party listened, enraptured and enthralled by the retelling of the very same events that I perceived only dimly from a distance in my smoldering cockpit.

I must admit now that I felt great resentment toward this clown. After all: he first insulted me by throwing a beer in my face, then had the audacity to make me swallow my own pride by saving my life. I might have owed him my life, but I felt nothing but anger and jealousy. A better man would have swallowed his pride and thanked him for being there at the right time and performing an act of heroism. I am the worse type of man, however, so I purchased a beer and stealthily crept up behind him. As his back was to me, I had the perfect opportunity to return the favor that I owed him from our first encounter. My revenge was at hand.

But it was not to be. As I tipped the stein above his head, he held his own recently-emptied stein to catch the flowing beer. I tried to move the glass around to get some of it on him, and was partially successful, but he caught the lion’s share of it in his tankard, which he then hoisted in what I took to be a mock salute, and drank it. I fumed at the sight of that smirk raising the side of his ridiculous moustache as he slurped down the beer.

“Thanks for the beer!� he said in a jovial way. “You really shouldn’t have, though, as I still owe you one from last time, don’t I?�

“That’s right,� I said coldly. Looking back on it, I was rather foolish, but at the time, I was full of pride and jealousy.

“Barmaid,� commanded Devious, “bring this man a beer on me!� Then, to me, he said: “Have a seat, Lieutenant Hothead, and drink with us.�

Somewhat ameliorated, I accepted the drink, and by the end of the night, we were all swinging our tankards and singing raunchy military songs and scaring the other customers out of the bar.

“That was a good attempt at sneaking up on me,� he confided after most of the other patrons had left. The two of us sat at the table, alone except for a gentleman at the end of the bar having remarkable success against the barmaid’s moral reservations. “Had I been alone, you might have succeeded, but you forgot that, though my back was turned, I could still sense your approach. I could see it in the faces of the other guys, and if I looked really closely, in the reflections of their tankards and pupils. Still, you get points for trying.�

“I thought you’d be mad,� I slurred.

“Mad? No! If you had failed to attempt some kind of satisfaction, I would have been disappointed, but you showed me that you’ve got some audacity, and that will get you pretty far.

“So, now that you know what the most important element in battle is, you have to learn the practical application. When you can afford it, and if you can find one, get a stealth generator. Never blindly accept command’s mission coordinates, but plot your arrival so that your stealth generator can be ready to go after you loose your first volley. Aim your approach so that you’re coming from the direction of the sun, so that your jump flash is masked, and so your enemies can’t see you while you’re uncloaked after the jump. After that, you’ll figure out the rest.�

I thanked him for the advice. I scribbled notes on the paper napkin because I knew I would forget them otherwise, and I considered this valuable information at the time, as none of this was covered in flight school. I realized, for the first time, that this Captian Devious was more than just a clown, and that he might actually be someone I could learn from. There was still a pang of guilt where there was anger, and still some jealousy, but these would fade if his tactics proved worthwhile.

We continued drinking and relating stories for another hour or so, then I drifted into unconsciousness. Honestly. I swear.

[Jeremy]

Um.

I love your story.

[warsign]

I love too...

[Nigel_Strange]

Thank you. More to come, as long as there is someone who wants to read it.

[tha_rami]

Oh yes there is. Probably the best story I've read up here so far. Great writing

[Daedalao]

Keep it coming, I was hoping for more already!

[Nigel_Strange]

The Vonari were in Cerulean.

I still remember when I first heard the news. I was having lunch with a girl from Deneb. She had satiny skin and bright green eyes. The people of Deneb all have this quaint accent that makes one think of small towns amid rolling hills of lush green grass and a whole lot of nothing to do but spend money and be happy. She was watching the vidscreen behind me in the restaurant while I was chewing my textured protein sandwich. Her eyes suddenly got wide and furrowed in the middle as her pretty face screwed up with sudden concern. I turned around and saw the screen for myself. A Vonari cruiser was shown in silhouette on one of those grainy intel shots they get from long range scout missions. It was unmistakably a Vonari cruiser. The caption at the bottom of the screen said “Vonari presence spotted in Cerulean.�

“You know anyone in Cerulean?� I asked.
“I have some family there,� she said.

That was the last time I saw her. I didn’t know her very well, but I asked around and found out that she went to Cerulean herself to see her brothers. I have no idea if she made it.

The Alliance was mobilizing forces to meet the Vonari threat, and I asked to be reassigned to the Hawk in Cerulean. I had been fighting in Tallison for a while and wanted a change of scenery, even if it was just a different nebula color. Command didn’t care what my reasons were, but they wanted to mobilize as quickly as possible and put up a good defense. This meant sending in their more experienced pilots early on. They also needed reconnaissance, and since my ship was equipped with a stealth generator (they made a point of not asking me how I obtained one) I was a perfect candidate for this type of mission. Within three days, I was in the flight deck of the Hawk.

Reconnaissance missions are different from the standard strike missions, which was what I was most familiar with. However, the stealth tactics that I learned from Captain Devious became my primary tools on these missions. The Vonari never saw me coming and never saw me leave. I would drop in from the direction of the sun to mask my entry flash. I would then transfer all power to weapons, as these stealth generators used the reserves of the weapon energy for charge (in addition to draining your shields). By the time I was about 10K away, I would engage the generator so that they would never even see a blip (experience in Tallison suggested that heir long-range scanners worked at about the same range as ours). I would then coast in without power until I could get a visual, then I’d turn on the scanners and take my pictures. In this way, we got fleet information and could respond in time to stop their progression.

On day 23 of my assignment in the Cerulean theater, I was doing one of these reconnaissance missions when I heard a distress call coming from a pilot in the nearby asteroid field. It was an Avenger class fighter from the Freedom. Apparently, the guy and his wingman were delivering a package to a Vonari cruiser and they got a little too close to the heat. They took some shrapnel and some heat, which fried their avionics and left them open to attack from the Vonari fighters. When I got there, using the sun for cover, as usual, I found them in nearly the same situation that Captain Devious rescued me from: they were a sitting target with a Vonari scout bearing down on them. The Vonari never saw me coming, and I dispatched it without difficulty. The Avenger pilot was glad I showed up, but his wingman didn’t make it. Because I helped out, I got to attend the funeral.

Ordinarily, the body would be sent back to the pilot’s homeworld where the funeral would be held. Military funerals were a humdrum affair: everyone dressed in their somber blacks with someone playing Taps and maybe a merry dirge or two on the bagpipes. This wingman, though, was the nephew of someone important in the local guild, so the family insisted on a guild funeral aboard one of their cruisers. I won’t go into the details about the complex relations between the guild and the military. Suffice it to say that everyone was tense and it seemed that something bad could happen at any moment. Thankfully, nothing untoward happened except a fist fight over a bottle of scotch.

The family insisted on what they called a “Viking funeral.� They dressed him up in his flight suit and strapped him into the cockpit of some small fighter he owned. Then, they just let it drift into the atmosphere of planet C580 while a green robed Gaian priest muttered some prayers about returning his component molecules to the biosphere or something to that effect. We all watched as the ship began to glow, then streaked down through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of ionized gas and black smoke, like a scar on the face of the world. After an hour or two, the scar had healed and we had finished our drinking and commiserating.

After the wake, I was approached by a senior officer of the Freedom.

“Commander Smythe said you were quite a pilot.� Smythe was the Avenger pilot I saved. “He described your rescue in great detail. After watching the footage taken from the Avenger, Colonel Frakes wanted to have a word with you.�

“When?�

“At your earliest convenience.�

An hour later, I was in Colonel Frakes’s in the stern of the Freedom. Like any other military carrier, living space was not in the design plan. The cabin was small, but neat. Frakes had arranged very little furniture in the place, and every available space remained empty, so that, though the room was small, it was also nearly featureless, giving the illusion of space.

“Close the door,� said Frakes. He was a thin man. I could not tell how tall he was because he was seated at his desk. He looked to be in his late forties. He had salt and pepper hair and a small grey moustache poised above his pursed lips like a tiny mountain goat in danger of sliding off. If it did slide off, it would have been saved by the rugged protuberant chin that jutted out like a rocky outcropping. His light blue eyes were cold as ice, and were reduced to the tiniest little beads thanks to the thick circular gold-rimmed glasses he wore. If someone asked me, I would have said he was from Glacia, but maybe that’s just a stereotype.

As I closed the door, he looked up at me, as though appraising me. He held me in that icy stare of his for some time, during which I began to feel a bead of sweat trickle down my spine. I had drunk too much during the wake to stand like that under the man’s magnifying lens. Finally satisfied with some invisible quality he had discerned after what seemed like a ten minute inspection, he smiled. It was a sudden flash of teeth that I found even more disturbing that the cold stare. Luckily, it vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving me to wonder afterward if he had smiled at all.

“That was a fancy bit of flying,� he said.

“Thank you, sir.�

“You have some skills that are…uncommon at your rank. Using the local star for cover, stealth generator, shooting down of missiles…very impressive.�

“Thank you, sir.�

“Not the sort of flying we provide training for,� he continued. I was trying to see where this was going, but couldn’t. “Which leads me to conclude that you had some outside training.�

“Yes, sir.�

“May I ask from whom?�

“Man I barely knew, sir.�

“Do you at least know his name?�

“He goes by the name Captain Devious, sir,� I replied.

Frakes nodded, as though this confirmed some suspicion he had. “Do you know where this Captain Devious is now?�

“No, sir.�

“I’ll tell you. He’s in Alpha Centari. He has been hiring mercenaries. We want you to be one of them.�

“Sir?�

“Your commanding officer on the Hawk will fill you in on the details. Dismissed.� After that, the colonel looked down at his desk screen and paid me no more heed. At the moment he stopped looking at me, I ceased to exist to him. I showed myself out.

[Nigel_Strange]

When I got back aboard the Hawk and settled in, I reported to Commander Waters for a briefing on my new assignment. After sitting down, he explained the situation to me, or at least, the part of the situation I was entitled to know about.

“How much do you know about this Captain Devious?� he asked. Waters was not a large man, nor was he imposing in any way. Some people believed that he got into his position because his family was well placed. I disagreed, though. The man might not have command stamped all over him, but he was subtle. He knew how to get things done, and he knew how to get people to do things, whether or not they knew it.

“Not much, sir. Decent fellow, I suppose,� I lied. I still had reservations about his personality, but I recognized them to be biases.

“Is this him?� he asked, blowing up a vid capture of him in group of pilots, posing together. They were holding a sign: Roland’s Raiders, 2421. That was several years ago. He was younger when the vid was taken, but it was definitely he.

“Yes, sir.�

“Are you certain?�

“Yes, sir.�

“Did he mention anything about his clan?�

“Clan, sir? No, sir.�

“Have you ever heard of Clan Destiny?�

“No, sir.�

“Have you ever heard of the Aurora?�

“Yes, sir.� The Aurora was a myth, or so I thought. It was rumored to be a ghost ship that appeared from nowhere and disappeared again without a trace. There used to be sightings of it across Evochron, and when someone said they’d seen it, eyebrows were raised, jokes exchanged, and someone would end up getting a free drink. It was said that it was the only carrier that had its own stealth generator. Shortly after it was commissioned, it disappeared and went AWOL. Nowadays, the only people who say they’d seen the Aurora were pilots who were too hung over to tell reality from hallucination. Any little ripple in the starscape, any vague blue flash, and someone was ‘seeing’ the Aurora. Most people believed that the technology destroyed the ship when it was first activated. Some think the ship teleported to another dimension. Some maintain the ship was decommissioned, but could never offer proof. “I always regarded it as a kind of myth, sir.�

“It’s no myth,� Waters vouchsafed. “The last time we received communication from it was two years ago. It was commanded by one Commander Tungsten Conrad. Let me be clear,� he continued. “From this point our conversation is top secret, understood?�

“Yes sir. Did you say Tungsten?� I asked.

“Yes. Tungsten, as in the metal. His parents were Meks.� Meks were some religious cult, which I understood worshipped technology, but did not know much else about them. I thought there was a Mek in my unit, but I never broached the subject with him.

“About three years ago, Conrad said he had evidence that the Vonari were planning something, but never actually produced any definitive evidence, at least, nothing that’s in the records. He later tried to convince Command to install experimental stealth generators on all the Alliance capital ships. Naturally, such an expensive enterprise was turned down. This was also before the Vonari started appearing in Tallison. Somehow, he managed to get the resources together to install an experimental stealth generator on his ship, the Aurora, without Command’s authorization or knowledge. As you can imagine, keeping a secret of this magnitude from Command indicates the kind of man we’re dealing with. He’s bright, subtle, and extremely motivated by whatever beliefs he has about the war effort. After the installation and testing was completed, he vanished, taking the Aurora and the Flying Monkeys with him.�

“Flying Monkeys?� I asked.

“That was the squadron under his command. They were stationed aboard the Aurora. I believe that Captain Ted Hackmore, or Captain Devious, as you know him, came up with that name.� His desk screen showed a later picture of Captain Devious with another group of pilots, the Flying Monkeys. They were holding a sign titled “The Flying Monkeys.� It depicted a little monkey with wings wearing a fez and a little vest, flying through the air, holding a tiny little dog. “This Devious character has an interesting sense of humor. That man,� he said, pointing to a tall officer to the side wearing commander’s bars and looking bored, “is Commander Conrad.� With his fingers, he enlarged the vid so that Conrad’s face filled the entire viewscreen. He had an aquiline nose and deep set eyes beneath a ridge of a brow that shaded them so that all you could see were the points of light reflecting off the corneas, like shiny gemstones reflecting light from the bottom of a cave. His collar was pulled up so that it nearly touched his hat. He had a dark Van Dyke and moustache, which were meticulously maintained. What was most disturbing, though, was his expression. It was hard to describe. All of the people in the picture were looking at the camera. Conrad, however, seemed to be looking through the camera, looking directly at the viewer, at me. It made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I knew it was nonsense, but I felt as if he were somehow watching me from across space and time. It was like when two people glance at one another and somehow come to some unspoken mutual understanding. I got the feeling that Conrad understood me, but I was not sure I understood him.

“We believe that Captain Devious and his entire squadron are still working for Conrad. We believe they have formed their own clan, called Clan Destiny. We aren’t sure what kind of hold Conrad has over his men. There is speculation that he has turned his command into some kind of cult, but that’s just hearsay. What we do know is that he has stolen Alliance property, abandoned his post, and is now working autonomously, outside the authority of the Alliance. To what purpose, we don’t know. We want you to find out.�

“Yes, sir.�

“We ultimately want Conrad brought to justice, but your initial assignment is to get close to him and then report back to us. Your initial point of contact is Ted Hackmore.�

“Sir, is ‘Ted’ possibly short for ‘Tedious?’�

“How is this relevant?�

“Sorry, sir.�

“You should be able to make contact with Hackmore in Alpha Centari. Because of your prior contact, it should not seem suspicious. Once you have inserted yourself into his confidence, gather intel without raising suspicion. We want to know his moves and his contacts. We want to know what he eats for breakfast. If he is working for Conrad, something along the line will show up that we can put a trace on. He might even take you straight to the Aurora, though highly unlikely. It all depends on how well you can infiltrate their clan. Understood?�

“Sir, I am not trained in espionage, sir.�

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just keep your head and try to get into the role of someone who is honestly trying to work as a mercenary. Oh, and one more thing: we’re going to fit you with a subcutaneous tracking device so we know where you are at all times. You’ll also receive a tangler for text messages.�

After that, I was dismissed. I was told to go to the infirmary where they put me under to install the tracking device. I guess it was more than a little chip under the skin, because the cut on my abdomen was an inch long. They assured me that it would heal up in a few days without leaving a scar, as it was important to be able to pass any inspection without arousing suspicion.

They also gave me a tangler. This is a small texting device that used the principle of entanglement to send communications instantly across any distance to its twin, of which Commander Waters had possession. I had only a vague inkling of how it worked, but apparently, it was of limited use: once you used all the bits in the tangler, you had to discard it, whereupon it would self-destruct. I could use it, though, to signal when I had reached a critical point in my mission. The other thing that made the tangler so important, besides being able to communicate instantly without delay across any distance was that the communication could not be intercepted at any point in between, because the communication did not actually travel between the two points. I never really understood it, but I remembered first hearing about these devices in the early 2400’s when scientists called them “magic boxes.� Externally, however, it looked just like any PDA, which was part of its overt function. I could cram it full of personal notes, so long as they were not mission related, or if they helped with the cover story that I was to use for the mission. The tangler, though, was good for only 64kb of information before it was exhausted, so whatever I sent had to be extremely condensed. The message did not have to be coded because it could not be intercepted, but a code could be established for the purpose of compaction. So, I had to learn some archaic binary code from the dawn of telecommunication.

In truth, I had serious misgivings about this mission. It was one thing to kill aliens, or even enemy humans, in open combat, even if stealth was used. It was another thing entirely to gain their trust and friendship, and then betray them. I had no great love for Captain Devious, but using his trust to achieve some kind of military goal seemed slimy to me, and I felt sullied by it. Needless to say, I did not confide these feelings in Commander Waters. I tried to rationalize my assignment by telling myself that this was a war and I was a soldier, and that obedience to higher command was the highest morality that a soldier was supposed to consider. It still did not sit well with me, though it seemed that many soldiers had no problem with moral ambiguity. Then again, neither did I until I actually faced a situation that evoked it.

After recovering from the surgery, I discarded my military gear (except for my ship) and assumed the role of a discharged Lieutenant looking to put his piloting skills to mercenary work, seeking gold and glory. I spent considerable time working out the details of my cover story and inputting corroborating evidence into my PDA/tangler. Finally, I packed my bags, jumped into my Evoch and headed to Alpha Centari.

[Nigel_Strange]

Is anyone still reading this?

[Vice]

Yup

[Wasp89]

Yes, and anxiously awaiting your next installment!

[tha_rami]

Yup, still am and still with great pleasure. Good stuff!

[Nigel_Strange]

OK, thanks. I just wanted to make sure you were still with me :-P

Thanks for your kind comments.

[Nigel_Strange]

Alpha Centari is a quiet and fairly well-off sector. The people there are open to trade with outsiders, even though the government is somewhat xenophobic. Since they open their trading arms to outsiders, they are a kind of magnet for mercenaries, which was why it was not surprising that Captain Devious would choose Alpha Centari for his mercenary-hiring needs. He could expect to find some higher quality mercenaries there, expecting higher pay, and flying better ships with more experience. What he wanted with these mercenaries, however, was not known.

With a good fulcrum drive, you can get from Cerulean to Alpha Centari in a matter of minutes, thanks to the network of warp gates that are placed for just such trips. I couldn’t imagine the old days when people had to travel using their jump drives only. Even with a jump drive, it could take hours to reach some destinations, maybe days, depending on your drive, and without enough fuel, it could easily end with you opening your own airlock and sucking void to escape a slow asphyxiation. As long as I kept my heading at zero and my ship on the ecliptic, I could hit every single warp gate without uncertainty. Travel has never been easier, thanks to recent upgrades in jump computers. In older models, you still had to type in the coordinates of the gates by hand, a process that was rather tedious and achieved pretty much the same thing.

As usual, I could not resist the temptation to take a few potshots at the Thubans as I shot through their sector of space. I don’t know what their problem is but even without the military insignia, they still hold some kind of grudge against me, which favor I’m only happy to return…with missiles.

When I arrived in Alpha Centari, I headed to AC 1 and asked around for Captain Devious. “You just missed him by an hour,� said the barman, so I waited around for a few hours, hoping he’d come back, but he didn’t. I then went to AC 2 and repeated the performance. Once again, I had just missed him. The third base, Starbase 1270, provided no more hope, though I noticed that the mission computer listed him on the roster for some internecine conflict between AC Energy and AC Guild. I jotted down the coordinates in my PDA and slipped back into my Evoch, hoping to catch him.

The coordinates turned out to be near an asteroid field. When I jumped in (away from the sun, as usual) I almost ran into some debris from a ship that had been shot up. I looked at it briefly to confirm that it wasn’t Devious. My computer alerted me to the presence of missiles firing in the distance. It was a good thing, too, because I couldn’t see the ships on my radar and the missiles were the only way I could follow the fight. I throttled up the Evoch and engaged the stealth generator, hoping to catch a glimpse of Devious in action without getting directly involved.

After a few minutes I was not disappointed. His wraith was battling against some unlikely number of enemies, and each time he swept through on the attack, one of them (sometimes more) would fly apart or go hurtling into an asteroid and explode. I could hear their screams in the radio chatter as Devious taunted them. This was a side to the man I had not seen before, and I was more than a little frightened. It was different when he was shooting down Vonari, but he seemed to engage humans with the same gusto as he did the aliens, gliding, shooting, rolling, and then vanishing suddenly, only to appear again a few seconds later barreling down on one of them with guns and lasers.

I was so enthralled by the spectacle that I failed to notice that my stealth generator was running out of power, and when I heard the telltale stealth shutdown, I felt like someone might feel if, when watching a war vid, comfortably seated and eating textured protein puffs, he is suddenly forced through the screen, right into the middle of the carnage, with naught but his protein puffs standing between himself and the flying plasma. So, I must have startled more than a few of the guild members, one of whom had to apply thrusters to keep from knocking into me. Seeing that my shields and weapons were down, and that I nearly collided with another ship, I felt the only course of action was to start moving, so I gunned the afterburners to take me out of the area of combat. Meanwhile, my appearance did not go unnoticed by Captain Devious.

“Welcome to the party,� he said, recognizing me as a mercenary and not as a guild member. “Sorry I couldn’t wait for you before starting in. I was just finishing up.�

“No problem,� I responded. “I’ll just help with the cleanup, unless you have some objections.�

“Not at all,� he replied. “Help yourself, Lieutenant Hothead.�

I was surprised that he recognized my voice. Maybe it was my Evoch. In any case, I was strangely pleased that I made enough of an impression on him that he remembered me, even if he had forgotten my name. It would make my job that much easier.

When the last of the enemy ships was spinning away, belching flames, and only the escape pods of the vanquished were left floating fecklessly in the zone, a group of miners showed up, as though waiting for some kind of queue.

“Keep an eye out for more guildies,� said Devious, flying his wraith around the miners like a mother duck guarding her brood. “They can’t stand the thought of anyone making money off these asteroids without their permission, and cut.�

When the miners had filled up with platinum, diamonds, and whatever other metals they managed to lift out with their mining beams, they bugged out, leaving Captain Devious and me alone in the asteroid field (except for the pod people, who were shaking their fists at us from their capsules.

“Looks like you picked up a few tricks since we last met,� he said.

“I’ve done alright.�

“I see you finally got a stealth generator.�

“Never leave home without it,� I replied.

“Looks like you’re on your own now. Got tired of the navy?� This was precisely the opening I needed.

“My term was up and I thought I could use a break. Besides, I could make a lot more out here than I ever could in the navy. Now I’m mercking it.�

“Hmm, yes. Easy money. Well, maybe not that easy. Not as easy as mining or buried treasure.�

“Buried treasure?� I asked.

“Indeed, let’s meet at AC1 and I’ll fill you in.

Once inside, we sat down and ordered some fine Alpha Centari ale. A pretty good brew, I can attest, though maybe not as good as the beer in Deneb.

“I heard you were looking for mercenaries,� I finally said. I knew he would know I followed him because, in the vastness of space, the odds of accidentally meeting up with someone are…astronomical.

“Indeed I was, but you’re too late. Those guys who got the ore from the asteroids were all the mercs I needed at the time, and now I don’t need them.� I’m sure he saw my disappointment. “I do have an opening, though,� he offered.

“I don’t know,� I replied with feigned indifference. In truth, I was not comfortable with where the conversation seemed to be headed. My misgivings were quickly allayed, though.

“I need a science officer,� he revealed. “Ever do scanner work?�

“Yes, I used to be pretty good during training,� I lied. They trained everyone on long range scanners when you joined the military, but I found it rather boring and never applied myself to it, preferring the thrill of combat and the sense of control I had over my own destiny when gripping the flight stick.

“ Excellent. I need someone to help me find buried treasure.�

“Buried treasure?�

“Not literally buried,� he corrected. “But buried in obscurity, in the vastness of space. Guildies and others tend to stockpile their black market goods in locations that only they are supposed to know about. However, with a good scanner, you can find their caches and grab the booty. Free loot! What could be better than that?�

“Don’t they guard them?�

“If their ships were seen patrolling some empty region of space, don’t you think they would attract some attention? That’s not to say that they don’t care that we steal from them. In fact, that is the main danger. However, most of these caches are long-forgotten drops from pilots who have long since ceased to breathe the air of the living, so they won’t mind if we help ourselves. Are you with me?� I nodded. “Excellent. We start tomorrow.�

The next day (day being defined arbitrarily by an atomic clock) we got started. Devious bought a phoenix with extra cargo space. Then we both left our warships in the hanger and dropped a deposit on the hanger rental. Devious would jump into a sector and I would send out a ping and read the heading of some container that came back. He would jump out again and jump in again at a different location, at which point I would send out another ping and get another heading. After three points, we could triangulate the exact location of the stash, at which point he would jump to it and inspect the contents. If they were valuable, he would engage the mining beam and fill up. Then we’d sell the loot at whichever starbase offered the most money for that particular item. Merchants at starbases, apparently, did not have the slightest concern about where their purchases came from, as long as they were good, and we didn’t volunteer any information, lest some of these merchants turn out to be related in some way to the very criminals we were ripping off.

Despite my initial reservations about my competency, I quickly got the hang of it. In fact, this was not so different from some of the training exercises I had to do in the navy. In hostile territory, the navy would leave caches such as these to provision long-range scout missions and deep penetrations into enemy territory, or so I was told.

We had been doing this work for a few hours when the local guild showed up.

“Mercenary, what the hell are you doing?�

“Making money, my friend,� said the Captain. He shut off the mining beam and redirected all of the available power to the shield system.

“Do you even have the slightest idea who you’re stealing from?� came the voice from one of the guild ships.

“I’m not stealing. I’m with the government. This is taxation,� he replied. Then he turned to me and said: “It’s a shame you can’t use the mining beam with the stealth generator.�

“The Death’s Head clan does not tolerate thieves!� came the suddenly dramatic voice from the radio.

“Except for yourselves,� muttered Devious under his breath.

“Clan Destiny does not tolerate hypocrisy!� retorted Captain Devious. At that point, he engaged the stealth generator (which he had transferred to the phoenix from Careless Whisper) and gunned the afterburners to pick up speed.

“Clan Destiny?� said the voice on the radio uncertainly. They had heard of Clan Destiny, all right, and they were afraid.

Their answer came in the form of a missile volley as we decloaked. The first ship was flaming wreckage before the other ships even knew they were under attack. There were only four of them, and they did not stand a chance against Captain Devious. After quickly dispatching two more, he addressed the final ship.

“I’m going to let you live,� said Captain Devious, “so that you can tell the rest of your guild not to interfere with Clan Destiny. Tell them that, or I swear I will find you and you’ll wish I had vaporized you right here.� The last ship jumped out without a word.

The rest of the day, our raiding went uninterrupted. Still, I felt uncomfortable with the situation, and this lump in my throat grew like a goiter until I could barely talk. Finally, I could no longer contain my unease. I had to say something when we got back to AC1: “You have a stealth generator and a jump drive.� “You didn’t have to fight. You didn’t have to kill them. They’re human, for heaven’s sake!�

“Unfortunately, I did have to kill them. They were sacrificed for sake of future safety. Once you get stung by a hornet, you leave hornets nests alone. It’s the same with Clan Destiny. We tend to avoid confrontation, but when put into a fight, we are ruthless. That reputation protects us, as well as protects others who are wise enough to stay out of our way. Eventually, we won’t need to fight: the reputation, alone, is the broker of peace.� Indeed, he had a point. I have absolutely no doubt that he told the rest of his guild because for the rest of our time in Alpha Centari, we never met up with them again.

This was the first confirmation I had that he was involved in Clan Destiny, or even that Clan Destiny existed. I have always regarded military intelligence as oxymoronic, so this confirmation helped me to feel more assured of the validity of my mission. I felt now less uncertainty about what I was doing, and why I was doing it.

I also discovered something new in Captain Devious. He was no longer just a clown doing pranks at the local bar. Up to this point, I had only seen the light side. However, he also had a dark side that was just as dark as his light side was light. He was not a clown, but a harlequin: black and white halves facing one another in perfect symmetry, like the nose art on his Careless Whisper, holding her finger to her lips, forever keeping some secret. Most of all, Devious remained a kind of enigma, and my curiosity about him and his clan was even more compelling a reason to keep going than any military duty.

[warsign]

I am with you, it's getting better and better...

[Maarschalk]

I just started reading this, Exelent writing skills, you should publish a book called Captain's Devious Evochron Advetures. I'll have to catch up on this reading!;););)

[BraveHart]

Excellent Fun Reading.....

Keep up the writing.....it helps to pass the time enjoyably while I'm in Sick Bay

[Nigel_Strange]

Decoded tangler message received by Commander Waters:

MADE CONTCT W DVS STOP
WRKNG W LOCAL MRCS MINING ROIDS N CACHES STOP
PLS ADVISE END

Response from command:

FOLLOW THE MONEY END

I had been working with Captain Devious for five days, during which time he tirelessly raided caches or guarded miners in the asteroid field. The miners worked for him under a temporary contract in which he provided absolute assurance of safety while they mined ore from the space rocks. Each one of them got to keep a percentage of the selling price for the ore while giving Devious a percentage for protection money. In this way, all parties gained, since the miners did not have to worry about defense and the combined wealth in their holds, divided by the percentage that the Captain took, was much more than any ship, even with a huge cargo bay, could take in within the same amount of time.

Well, all parties gained, that is, except for the local miners guild. The miners, however, had heard from the Death’s Heads that the interlopers were Clan Destiny, and so none of them wanted to raise the issue. In fact, none of the mining mercenaries were from Clan Destiny: they were all just local guys that Devious picked up in various star bases, but the miners guild didn’t need to know that. In any case, it was a good thing that they didn’t, for if they suspected that there was only one ship from Clan Destiny in the operation, they might have attempted some kind of intervention, and I am certain that it would have meant all of their deaths. Captain Devious was not a man to be trifled with, and he was well up to the task of exterminating the entire guild if he put his mind to it.

This showed the cold logic by which he reduced the level of overall carnage by instigating the bloodbath with the Death’s Heads early on. The Death’s Heads were feared above all other guilds in the sector, and the fact that Devious had already bloodied their noses had caused a chilling affect throughout the sector. If even the Death’s Heads were afraid of Devious, then the local miners would just have to be nice and hope that we would go away eventually.

As you might imagine, between the large-scale mining protection gig and the hidden cache raiding (some of those caches had quite valuable items, by the way) Captain Devious had made a tremendous amount of money in a fairly short time, and as his faithful (or so he imagined) science officer, I was treated to a fairly high wage. The income was nice, though it was not as much as I had made in my own black market dealings. Still, it was much less work, since I was paid on the hour, whether I did anything or not.

It seemed to me that, though the Captain was making ludicrous sums, he was living frugally, so the money was being put to some purpose other than fast living. When I asked him about it, though, he was evasive.

We were sitting on the roof of a building one evening as the last rays of Alpha Centari glistened off the tallest skyscrapers. Devious was counting out credits and doing accounting while I was making an entry in my PDA.

“I’d like to join Clan Destiny,� I announced.

“I was wondering when you’d ask. You can see the benefits of being in the most feared clan in Evochron. You can be initiated in Riftspace,� he said.

“Riftspace?�

“Yes.�

“I thought Riftspace was a kind of legend,� I replied.

“You mean you’ve never been to Riftspace?�

“No.�

“Then you’ve never taken the pilgrimage,� he said, one eyebrow raised.

“No.�

“Every pilot worth his water takes the pilgrimage.�

“What is the pilgrimage?� I asked.

“A long time ago,� he proceeded, as though instructing a child, �a pilot left a beacon on Sapphire. This beacon had a message in it that leads to another beacon, and that to another, and so on. Each beacon is harder to find, and each message is more difficult to detangle…until you get to the last beacon that tells you how to find Riftspace. We all have to do it. It’s a kind of rite of passage. Only the most dedicated, intelligent, and fearless pilots make it to Riftspace, so when they get there, we know they have what it takes to be part of Clan Destiny. After that, all that’s left is the initiation.�

He smiled. “Piece of cake,� he said cheerily. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine.�

“What is all this?� I asked. “Pilgrimage? Initiation? I thought this was a clan, not a cult.� It seemed that military intelligence might have been right about another thing: Conrad kept control over his followers through turning his command into some kind of cult. It was becoming so clear now. The man was dangerous, and running around in a cloaked carrier with a lot of delusional fanatics doing his bidding was a chilling thought, indeed, especially now that I’ve seen one of those fanatics up close and personal.

Then it occurred to me that, distasteful as it might seem, I was already committed to getting into this clan in order to get close to the infamous Conrad and his stolen carrier. Like it or not, I was already committed to the pilgrimage. I suddenly became fearful of my chances for success. If only the best and brightest survive the journey Riftspace, where would that leave me, considering my mediocre claim to either title? On the other hand, I was happy to have a direction. There is tremendous comfort in knowing what you have to do, even if you know it is difficult. It’s much worse to be improvising, floundering, wondering what you should do, and sweating over it all night instead of sleeping.

I should point out here that when he paused after the word ‘detangle’ he was looking straight at me. I did not see the significance of this at the time. However, when he did so, I immediately thought of my tangler and my eyes involuntarily (and unconsciously) looked at my PDA. I should have realized that he suspected that I had the tangler at the time. It’s easy to see In retrospect. Though I knew him to be a great starfighter pilot, it would never have occurred to me that he was capable of the level of subtly that could cause me to betray myself in this manner without even realizing it. In other words, I was totally oblivious to what had really just happened.

Hindsight is strange thing, sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrifying. As things are revealed to you, your life changes before your very eyes until it is unrecognizable, like looking at yourself in a mirror and seeing someone else’s face staring back at you. Things that seemed meaningless at the time become crystal clear instances of sudden revelation, throwing dark shadows upon areas of your life that you previously thought you understood. They say that when you are dying, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I see this as a final instant realization of the truth of every single moment of your life that you had hitherto misunderstood, and in that final moment, you achieve a perfect clarity, a perfect understanding of your significance in the universe. For a single brief instant, the light of your existence is focused to single perfect point that burns through all of the self deception that you have built up, layer after layer, year after year, leaving an empty, burnt-out hole where you thought you had a soul.

I was not cut out for espionage, as you can probably tell already. Living a lie causes a kind of decay of the soul. It eats at you slowly and insidiously. You might not recognize it at first, but as you become accustomed to telling lie after lie in order to defend or hold up previous lies, your life turns into a kind of mirage. Nothing in your mind has substance except for fear: the fear of getting caught in a lie and seeing that entire house of cards spilling onto the floor. I was living a lie, but I had to keep going because it was for the greater good. I was starting to become paranoid. In hindsight, I was not nearly paranoid enough.

Back on my ship, I sent my second tangle:

DVS SEZ FOLLOW BEACON QUEST TO RIFT END

The response was pretty much what I expected:

DO IT END

[Maarschalk]

OK, I'm caught up!, Ready for more of the good stuff!;)