A Check for a Billion Read online

  “Brainiac, calculate a route to Qirlats. We’ll go meet with Hilvar. We need to get rid of this dead weight.”

  “What should we do about the battlesphere?” Eunice asked, alarmed.

  “Maintain distance. Damn…This is all so inconvenient…”

  “I agree. We need to get to Zalva as quickly as possible!”

  “You will not set foot on Zalva, human,” said Oleander unexpectedly, having correctly understood that by ‘dead weight’ I was referring to his lordship. He addressed me exclusively, refusing to acknowledge Eunice. “You have no invitation and therefore cannot enter the capital.”

  “I’ve already been promised safe conduct to Zalva, so the issue is resolved.”

  “Safe conduct?” The Precian grimaced. “You are truly a human if you believe that! The only ship not subject to inspection is the emperor’s. Our border troops scan any incoming ship entirely. There is no way to hide somewhere or be shielded. The one who offered you this is a fool. Or he deliberately misled you, pursuing his own interests. Perhaps he intends on turning you over to the empire for a bounty. Such an act would earn him both praise and a reward!”

  I cursed. My interactions with Grander were limited to a few minutes’ total, but I was sure that this was exactly his plan.

  “There are still people loyal to me on Zalva, who have the required level of access,” Oleander went on. “If you need to get something, we can arrange for it to be delivered.”

  “I thought you don’t deal with humans,” I said.

  “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for my son. In return, you will let him go! What do you need on Zalva?”

  “I need the logbook of the prince’s scout that the Zatrathi captured.”

  “Is that all?” Oleander asked with surprise. “The log from Rrgord’s vessel?”

  “Yes. Zalva itself is of no use to me. All I need are the entries for analysis.”

  “Rrgord’s ship is neither unique nor secret. It is located in one of the hangars and undergoes daily inspection. If all you need is the logbook, I am ready to make a deal. But only for the sake of my son! As for my own fate, I don’t care what it is. I do not need the help of a human!”

  “It’s a deal then. Whom should I contact?”

  “No one. Set course for planet Valtor in Confederate space. The planet is loyal to me, and the adviser won’t dare follow me there.”

  “I’ll show you this just in case.” I took out the Zatrathi grenade and tossed it into the container with Narlin. “If there are any problems, your son will die his final death. His binding to the planetary spirit will do him no good.”

  “My word is not enough for you?! This is precisely why I wish to cleanse the Precian Empire of all humans,” said Oleander with hatred. “You have no place in Galactogon. You need to be destroyed like the rodents that you are before you manage to destroy yourself and us with you!”

  Ah! I have risen through the ranks to the level of a rodent! Excellent! I am no longer at the very bottom. Although it would be better to make sure. I handed Oleander the jewelry case again:

  “What’s inside?”

  The Precian resisted taking the emperor’s gift as long as he could, but it was already clear from his expression that he would help eventually. I pointed at the container with Narlin, forcing Oleander to act faster. The Precian snatched the case from my hand, and his fingers danced along its surface, touching protrusions and indentations known to him alone. A click sounded and the case’s lid flipped aside. A bright red light flooded the bridge deck.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Eunice whispered, pulling out an intricate statute of some creature. Made of some kind of glittering material, the emperor’s gift cycled through every shade of red, radiating a pleasant and soothing light. A leaden heaviness filled my eyelids. I began to nod off and quietly slipped into a dream.

  I woke up to someone roughly brushing my cheek with cold metal.

  “Cap’n, you better wake up on your own or I’ll be forced to give you a kiss!” The snake’s tail swayed before my eyes. The statuette had already been returned to its rightful place inside the case.

  “What was that?!” I said indignantly, looking over the ‘damage.’

  Eunice was slumped against Oleander’s shoulder, sleeping, while he, in turn, snored loudly, his head resting on hers. My exclamation caused everyone to snap back to their senses.

  “Did you do that on purpose?” I loomed over Oleander.

  “What? I merely did as you commanded, pirate! What are you dissatisfied with now?”

  “You could have warned us! What was that?”

  “The Oblivion of Jarullah, as I understand it…The emperor gives each subject what he lacks. This was the third adviser’s reward. Everyone knows that he is a recalcitrant workaholic. He performs his duties fanatically — to the detriment of his own health. My brother gave him this to force him to rest. I suppose the message is that sleep too is good for the empire.”

  I nodded. This made a lot of sense. The adviser was always in a hurry, wanting things done yesterday. He was insatiable. Naturally, given his pace he’d have to sacrifice sleep. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have enough time. And at some point, his lack of sleep would hamper his health. It was not for nothing that he had suffered so much in the Barrens of Zalva’s moon. Age and his extreme workload had had their effect. It was a pity that the adviser did not heed the imperial order and deposited the gift into the vault immediately upon arriving at the cruiser. I would need to make sure and return this sleeping pill to its owner, before his fatigue overwhelmed him.

  “Are the beacons attached to the jewelry case or the statuette?”

  “The case.”

  “I have a job for you, snake. Find me a way to block the artifact’s effects. Without the case. We will hand it over to our client. He still does not know what lies inside. Brainiac, set course for Valtor! Oleander is our guest.”

  * * *

  A large and motely welcoming party came out to meet the brother of the Precian Emperor. It turned out that Precians of various classes supported the official opposition. There were merchants here and soldiers and even some of the local nobility. The first dock could barely accommodate those who wanted to ensure the safety of the Leader of the Resistance, as Oleander called himself. And I suppose after his dramatic demonstration of defiance before the emperor and the bust-up that followed, his supporters were right to be concerned for the Precian’s life.

  “I need a day to get the records,” Oleander warned, as the official reception drew to a close. “Wait for me planetside.”

  “We’ll wait, as will the grenade next to Narlin. Keep in mind that an EM pulse won’t disable it,” I reminded just in case.

  Fortunately, my fears were unfounded. Early next morning, Oleander handed me the data stick. Brainiac scanned it and confirmed that he could extract the coordinates of seven planets that had never been located before. We had succeeded! Rejoicing, I let Narlin go and didn’t even demand that his father return to the orbship. Gossip had it that it was his supporters who had contracted the Corsican to free their leader from the Precians to begin with.

  Sitting in my orbship, I was finally left alone with my own thoughts. Eunice had gone off to the local market to buy some provisions. You couldn’t call Valtor a popular planet, but there were still plenty of merchants around. Considering that Oleander was not an official representative of the Precian Empire, I assumed that contraband was in high demand too.

  I spent a long time staring at my PDA, deciding what to do. Anyway you spin it, Grandar had reached his elevated station with my help and, given his proximity to the emperor, it would be a pity to kill him. And yet! That impudent, narrow-minded, bourgeois scoundrel had wanted to turn me in for a bounty! I could not forgive this. What was more important? The vain thought that one of the locals had made his fortune thanks to me, that I had some influence on the lore of Galactogon — or two billion GCs in my personal account and a positive rapport with the third advise
r?

  ‘What a dumb question,’ I said to myself as I dialed an old acquaintance. I knew the adviser much better than Grandar and our partnership had always been productive.

  “Adviser, this is Surgeon speaking! I am glad that the incident with the pirates is behind us. Do you have a minute to spare?”

  “You have the audacity to call me after your awful deeds on that cruiser?!” came the irate reply. “A thousand deaths! A thousand valiant Precians cast into oblivion because of you, Surgeon!”

  “Which of my emotions are you currently appealing to?” I clarified. “My conscience? You’ve got the wrong human. Would it be better if your nobles had become the pirates’ hostages or slaves?! Things worked out the way they did because of the Jolly Roger! I wasn’t working with them.”

  “We could have managed without your involvement!”

  “Lies!”

  “Lying is your business. Tell me that you’re not on Valtor right now or that you aren’t the one who delivered Oleander there!” the adviser pressed. “He’s already announced that neither the Precian Empire, nor the pirates, nor even the Zatrathi can oppose the freedom of the word and his message to cleanse Galactogon of the human plague. Are you digging yourself a grave?”

  “Adviser, what’s the difference what type of hole I’m digging and for whom? I am calling you about another matter altogether. I want to tell you the truth of who hired me and return your artifact to you. We can be useful to each other. Let’s not ruin our partnership.”

  “I have already surmised that Narlin is not behind this,” said the adviser after a long pause. “You have a minute.”

  “Grandar,” I said, without any introduction or explanation.

  A florid Precian curse sounded on the other side and I grinned widely. This situation was starting to look lucrative indeed!

  Rrgord turned out to be a hardworking type. In his brief life he had managed to acquire a fame that reached almost all of Galactogon. The complete fruits of the Precian astronomic community were at his disposal and as a result, random jumps often brought unexpected and pleasant results. For example, not every experienced explorer could boast of the discovery of seven star systems with one or two planets each. Yet the prince had managed this in his paltry 20 years. He was a born explorer.

  The system closest to us was just a ten-minute hyperjump away, so we immediately set out for our prize.

  “We are emerging from hyperspace. Planet detected! Attention! Uldan battlesphere detected in our vicinity!”

  The silver ball was still shadowing us. It had left us alone as we approached the Valtor system and then reappeared as soon as we had strayed from the populated center.

  “Brainiac, broadcast the following on the public frequency: ‘Your constant presence is beginning to irritate me. If you do not explain the reason for your pursuit, I will be forced to attack!’”

  “Done…There is no response.”

  “Lex, let’s deal with the planet, first, huh?” Eunice placed her hand on my shoulder soothingly, reminding me of our main objective. I nodded in agreement, sending the ship to land. The battlesphere followed us at a respectful distance.

  You are the first player to land on the planet Zartamin (Precian Empire). This planet’s second name is ‘Rrgord the Almighty-4.’

  Do you wish to claim this planet for yourself? Warning! Claiming this planet will decrease your rapport with the Precian Empire.

  There was no planetary spirit as such on this rock. In fact, there was nothing on it at all — neither an atmosphere, nor minerals, nor water, nor our prize check. It was even more barren than the Moon. In accordance with the rules, we would have been notified that it was here as soon as we’d emerged from the ship. Everything was clear here though. A heaviness weighed on my soul. It had been too simple to get those coordinates and it had been too simple to reach the planet too…I had had to jump through numerous hoops to get to Rrgord, while in this case, all it took was a simple deal with Oleander and that’s it. This kind of effort wasn’t worth a billion credits.

  “Nobody said that it would be easy,” Eunice encouraged me when I shared how I felt with her. “We might even have to fight our way to one of those planets, who knows. Anyway, there are only six remaining. Let’s go! We can visit all of them before we meet Grandar!”

  We visited three more planets and encountered similar disappointment. The planets were all identical. I didn’t claim any one of them because I had just begun to recover my rapport with the Precians. Launching into orbit from the fourth, I lost my cool and swore loudly — the battlesphere remained with us. My anger and frustration boiled over.

  “No, this is too much,” I muttered. “Brainiac, broadcast the following: ‘This is your last chance to communicate before I attack. You have a minute!’”

  “Message broadcast.”

  “Battle stations! Snake, ready ten torpedoes for launch!”

  I gave our annoying tail a minute and a half instead of one. There was no answer. Eunice did not object to the attack. Like the rest of the crew, she had grown sick and tired of our stalker.

  “Throttle to a hundred! Brainiac, let this bastard have it!”

  Warlock burst forward like never before. It was the first time I’d ordered the engines to full thrust and even the inertial dampeners couldn’t deal with the force. We were imprinted in our chairs, as Brainiac displayed our ETA to the battlesphere on the screens: 2 AU. A minute passed yet the distance did not change. The enemy matched our pace easily, causing further irritation.

  “Snake, launch the torpedoes!”

  “Torpedoes away!” the engineer reported as Warlock shook noticeably — running at full throttle had its drawbacks. The deadly missiles shot away with much greater speed than the ship and rapidly closed the distance to the enemy. I was eagerly expecting contact. Ten seconds remained.

  “Something’s about to happen,” Eunice muttered impatiently.

  Seven seconds.

  “Brainiac maintain our speed. We need to finish him off.”

  Three seconds.

  “Everyone get ready!” I clenched my armrests, expecting to see the silver sphere ignite before me.

  Contact! The torpedoes continued on their way, burning through their fuel, while the battlesphere vanished.

  “Bandit portside!” Brainiac announced in a panicked tone. “I am detecting an EM cannon tracking us. Brace for impact!”

  For a split second, the light in the captain’s deck blinked.

  “Power supply restored!” reported the engineer.

  “Gunner, fire at will!” I ordered. The Uldan had made the mistake of entering our beam cannons’ range and my orangutan responded with a flamacue of plasma.

  “Torpedoes away! Time to contact is five seconds…No! I don’t believe it!”

  I could understand the snake’s disappointment — the battlesphere had just been to starboard and a bit below us — yet now it had appeared on the opposite side.

  “Brainiac?”

  “I don’t know!” the computer said with resignation. “What is this? Instant teleportation? He simply vanished and immediately reappeared in a different place!”

  “Brace for impact!”

  The lights flashed again and the engineer announced the unpleasant news:

  “Captain, we have enough elo reserves to take five more such shots.”

  “I see. Turn us around then,” I ordered, frustrated. Looks like we picked up the Losers debuff somewhere. “Brainiac, set course for Belket! I need to speak with the Hansa people!”

  “Calculating now,” said the computer, relieved, and displayed a countdown timer. We danced with the battlesphere for a full minute before the stars turned into long lines. And I should say that our enemy did most of the dancing, amusing himself and shooting at us with his EM cannon. He used neither torpedoes nor beam guns.

  “We only have three planets left,” Eunice reminded just in case.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere while that jerk is on our tail wit
h a clear advantage,” I shook my head. “He was openly mocking us!”

  “Why do you even care? So he’s there…big deal. He wasn’t bothering us! Notice that there was no aggression on his part. You started it first.”

  “And to no avail,” the snake intervened. What are they, best friends all of a sudden? “Twelve torpedoes down the drain! I’ll need an entire hour to restore them.”

  “Brainiac, request permission to land on Belket. We’ll head to Hansa straight away.”

  After I gave Hansa some of the equipment I had plundered from the Uldan warehouse, they had become easier to deal with. Not so much when it came to their new systems, as with their corporate representatives who became more hospitable. Although, I confess, the list of devices that they offered me under the table pleased me too. Here, in particular, was some camouflage for my marine armor, which could create a cloaking field that would hide me across all known spectra. The perfect disguise for a thief, and worth some twelve billion credits. Which is like three, motherfracking, B-class cruisers! Had everyone gone mad in Galactogon? And I know for sure that at least one player bought that upgrade. I’d seen it work in person.