The Last Praetorian (9 page)

Unlike the other windows on the station, an energy field,
much like the one on the flight deck, which could be easily raised and lowered
to allow ships to dock, protected one full length of his office. 

Jon turned back to his desk, picking up the paperwork that
now littered the floor.  The paperwork that running a sizable company
entailed.  “As I have told you before I prefer the view; anyway I would get
claustrophobic shackled to this desk without it,” Jon explained. 

Paul had known Jon a long time and had inkling to some of
the ghosts in his past and hence let the matter drop, almost.

“Hey!  It’s no problem with me,” Paul responded with a grin.
“I just want to know who is going to be signing my pay-check if we ever have a
power failure in this section of the station.”

“And here I thought you were gunning for the Chief Executive
position.”

“No way!” said Paul holding up his hands in defence, “The
paperwork would kill me.”

“Anyway,” Jon continued, “I like not having a window in my
office, as I find that it helps keep the meetings shorter.” He had noticed the
representative from the Syndicate frequently glancing at the missing window in
irritation.  While the energy barrier retained atmosphere and deflected the
harmful rays from the system’s star just as well as a window, the gaping
emptiness did cause a subconscious chill in most visitors, and they had no
inclination to hang around to see just how reliable the stations energy
distribution grid was.    

Meanwhile Paul had been scanning Jon’s remaining schedule
for the day – when an item caught his eye and he frowned in consternation. 
“You are actually planning on going ahead and attending this meeting?” He said,
spinning the data-pad around and pointing at one of the few remaining items on
his schedule for the day. Jon glanced at the item confirming that his old
friend was indeed referring to the meeting on
Transcendence
Station a
couple of astronomical units (AUs) from the station.

“Why not?” Jon replied, “It looks like a good prospect. They
insisted on a face-to-face meeting to agree on some final details before they
signed the contract.”

“A prospect that we have never heard of before, that is
offering us a huge sum of money and insists that the contract can only go ahead
after a face-to-face meeting with you personally?  This, straight after you
have told the Syndicate that they can go to hell?” Paul replied with increasing
tones of disbelief.

“Well I will agree it is a little unusual,” Jon replied with
an easy smile. “However, you cannot expect me to remain in my office, hiding
under the desk waiting for the Syndicate to send somebody to kill me,” Jon
said, tossing the data-pad back to Paul with a grin. “Anyway,” Jon went on
pointing his thumb in the direction of the missing wall, “we could have a power
failure in this section.”

“Funny,” Paul replied with a resigned sigh.

“Oh you worry too much,” Jon replied as he strode towards
the exit. “Anyway I’ll be in the
‘Light
, so I’ll be perfectly fine…
Paul?” Jon inquired just before Paul reached the door.

“Yes?”

“Do you think a person should be forgiven for the mistakes
they made in the past?”

“I guess that depends on the mistake, doesn’t it?”

Jon nodded as he watched the door slide open, then close
behind his chief of operations.  It didn’t matter what others thought, he
decided.  He was never going to forgive himself anyway.

*****

Miranda’s gaze was drawn away from the sparkling white ship
by the sounds of the shuffling footsteps and crack of the cane as Magistratus
Mallart made his way down the corridor to their waiting ship.  As he approached
he dropped into a seat next to the window with an audible sigh of relief.

“By the Creator, will I be glad to get off this hellish
place.  I can only hope that this dilapidated rust bucket has a power failure
in Radec’s office and hurries him on to meet his maker!” he cursed while trying
to get his breath back.

Miranda remained silent, correctly assuming that the meeting
had not gone well.  Not that she was particularly surprised as she doubted that
she and her ship would have been sent with the Magistratus if the Syndicate had
thought that Jon Radec would have accepted their offer.  She had already read
the limited file that the Syndicate had on the CEO of Vanguard and privately
she would have been disappointed if he had capitulated so easily.  It would
seem that for once their intelligence on the man had been correct, identifying
him as overconfident, arrogant and a risk-taker.  He did seem to have an
excellent taste in ships however, as Miranda turned her gaze back towards the
ship floating in space only a couple of meters from the viewing port…

“What is that…?”  Miranda breathed, unable to keep the full
sense of awe from her voice, even though she knew Mallart would disapprove.  Glancing
out the window Mallart squinted at the ship then looked away with distaste,
obviously not sharing Miranda’s opinion of the aesthetic beauty of the ship
floating outside.

“Old long range Imperial courier shuttle,” her superior
groused, “not many of them still functional since the disintegration of the
Imperium – too expensive.  Not much demand for a hyperspace capable shuttle
these days that can also enter atmosphere,” he pointed at a number of points on
the bow and body of the shuttle where the additional shielding was obviously
designed to cope with the extreme heats of atmospheric re-entry.  “All a waste
of money if you ask me, carrying around all the extra shielding.  Why not just
dock at one of the orbiting stations and get the damn shuttle down like
everybody else?” he stated with distaste.

“You mean the ship can land, like on a planet?” Miranda
asked incredulously.  While she had observed a number of planets that existed
within the system, she had always done so from one of the docking stations in
orbit.  Having been born in space she had never actually set foot on a planet. 
Too dangerous, her superiors had always warned her; having been born in the lower
gravity of the various ships and stations of the system.  It was considered
dangerous, as the additional gravity could put too much strain on her heart. 
Some people had literally dropped dead on stepping out of a shuttle onto a
planet’s surface for the first time.  

“Where did he acquire such a ship?” 

A hint of a frown crossed Mallart’s face when he replied. 
“We are not too sure.  Intelligence could not find much on his past beyond a
couple of years ago.  He seemed to have suddenly appeared in the system, with
the ship and enough money to acquire this relic left over from the war and to
establish his company.  We did manage to find out from docking manifests the
name of the ship… He calls it the
Eternal Light
”. 

Privately Miranda thought that it was a fitting name for
this beautiful ship, as the ship seemed to glow a silvery-white as it was
bathed in light from the stars and the small amount of light produced by this
system’s distant star.  The sharp pointed bow of the ship, smoothly elongated
body, which flared out into a pair of tapered wings that were obviously
required for atmospheric flight before ending in a pair of elevated aft tails. 
The entire ship reminded Miranda of a picture from Old Earth of a hawk in
flight.  A flight that it was Miranda’s job to end, permanently.  It seemed sad
to her that it was her responsibility to destroy such a thing of beauty, the
pilot she did not give a second thought to.  If he was stupid and arrogant
enough to turn down her employer’s offer then he would get what he deserved. 
Miranda did spare a brief thought to what it would be like to fly such a
magnificent ship but quickly turned back to her job at hand…

“Is she armed?”  She inquired focusing her thoughts once
again on her job at hand after being briefly distracted by the beauty of the
ship.

“Armed?” Mallart replied with a short bark of laughter.  “It’s
an old and very expensive courier ship.  Its job was to transfer VIPs
comfortably and quickly from one system to another, nothing more.  It’s not a
warship, my dear,” he concluded putting a heavy emphasis on the last word. 

Miranda glanced at him with obvious distaste.  He had spent
the whole journey making unwanted advances towards her, frequently suggesting
that her advancement would be far more rapid if she was ‘accommodating’ to
him.  Miranda found the whole idea repulsive, the idea that he would use his
position to try and urge her to sleep with him.  Not the least that he was old
enough to be her father!  She was rather looking forward to the solitary
journey home in her own ship away from the lecherous old bastard.

In her late twenties, with a slim, willowy body, long flowing
dark hair and exotic features, her face was definitely oriental - high
cheekbones, full lips and straight nose.  Combined with her almond-shaped brown
eyes Miranda had long garnered a lot of attention from the opposite sex.  She
had been in a number of relationships, but they had all lasted only a short
time and most had ended acrimoniously, including one who was still nursing a
broken arm.  She had long since given up on the hope that she would ever meet
somebody who would view her for who she was, who would treat her as an equal
and not some plaything to be used and then later discarded.

“Fine!“  Miranda snapped angrily.  “Then it will just make
this job quicker and easier for me.” With that she turned her back on the
Eternal
Light
and stalked off towards their waiting freighter and her much smaller
but deadlier ship secreted in the aft cargo hold… 

A few hours later the freighter carrying the Magistratus
from the Chamber of Commerce, Business and Shipping slowly pulled away from the
station.  Unnoticed by the station’s sensors, a small patch of darkness quietly
separated from the departing ship and slipped under the shadow cast by the
station to await its prey…  

*****

Having finally concluded the remaining business for the day,
Jon slipped into the comfortable and familiar cockpit of the
Eternal Light
or
‘Light
as he had long since referred to her.  He smiled briefly as
the thought crossed his mind of why ships were always female as he tried to
envisage the
‘Light
as male.  The
‘Light
had sheltered, protected
and offered him a home since his own had been lost years before.  Anyway the
‘Light
was the most beautiful ship in this system or any other.  No the
‘Light
was definitely a lady.  With that final thought he eased the power to the
engines and slowly pulled away from the station.   As the station slowly
receded in the aft scanner he gave some thought to the first time that he had
laid eyes on the station…

He had still been a lowly Lieutenant back in the Imperial
Navy only recently having gained his commission when his squadron had been
dispatched to the outer rim to investigate a growing spate of pirate attacks on
the commercial shipping in this sector. 

Even back then the Syndicate was busy in this system,
Jon
mused to himself. The squadron had been based out of this station for several
months, back then it was just a remote repair and re-supply station designated,
Terra Nova
. Even then the station had seemed ancient.  During that
posting Jon remembered detesting it, viewing this assignment as a fool’s errand
in the middle of nowhere, with no opportunity for recognition or promotion.  It
seemed a different life back then, being that young eager Lieutenant always
looking for the next opportunity to demonstrate his flying prowess and eager
for promotion to newer and better things.  Thinking back he would have given
that brash youth some advice, b
e careful what you wish for… otherwise you
might just get it.

Far enough from the station Jon punched in the co-ordinates
to
Transcendence
Station into the autopilot and pushed the sub-light
engines up to full thrust.  Reclining back comfortably into his pilot seat, he
settled down for the three-hour journey to his destination.

As the
Eternal Light
moved away from the station,
rapidly picking up speed as it departed, a shadow that had attached itself to
the station detached and oriented itself in the same direction as the departing
ship, following slowly, at a distance, so as to ensure that it was not picked
up on any of the watching sensors… 

*****

Barely halfway into the journey the aft scanner once again
pinged as it picked up a faint contact that once again, faded from the
scanner.  Jon glanced at the aft scanner with a faint frown.  That was the
third time during this flight that the aft scanner had detected something
before it disappeared, the contact too weak for the scanner to identify before
it disappeared from the scanner completely. 

The
‘Light
was travelling at 0.1C, almost a tenth the
speed of light, rapidly heading away from the main sequence dwarf star that
made up one of the three stars in the Zeta Aquilae system.

Their home station
Terra Nova
meant “new land” or
“new earth” in Latin, a long dead language from Old Earth.  Zeta Aquilae was
unique as it was the only tripe star system within the Confederation.  Zeta
Aquilae had already been recognised as a place of immense interest back on Old
Earth where it had been given the Mandarin names Woo and Yuë, representing the
state Wu, an old state in China that was located at the mouth of the Yangtze
River, and Yue an old state in Zhejiang province.

The main system star, a dwarf star, was mostly composed of
electron-generating matter.  The star was incredibly dense, the mass of the
star was comparable with that of the Sun in the Sol system but the volume only
comparable to that of Old Earth itself.  The huge amount of electrons and other
particles being given off from the star generated the “Solar Wind” that was
particularly dense in this system.  It was this soup of high-energy particles
that was giving the rear sensors so much trouble.