Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Prize

2953-03-19 – Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Prize 

While it is not particularly common, mercenaries are in the business of fighting other mercenaries when their employers’ interests come into conflict and the situation does not permit one company to buy out the other’s contract. Normally these fights are not to the last man – one company or the other will decide the losses aren’t worth it and capitulate – but on particularly high-paying missions, the amount of death and destruction required to make mercenaries give up the fight can be extremely large. 

I have heard it told that many mercenaries fear fights with other mercenaries more than they fear any other sort of combat; pirates, knowing their fate if captured, will regularly fight to the death if they can’t flee, but hired guns spend all their free time thinking up tactics and tools to maximize the death they deal out at minimal cost to themselves. 

Derrick Kaluza drummed his fingers on the wardroom table, his eyes darting between the holo-display suspended from the overheads, his wristcuff display, and Judith Stirling, seated on her own halfway down the table.  

The other three people present, all Kaluza’s subordinates, did their best to avoid notice; they kept themselves busy on their slates, only occasionally glancing up. Judith hadn’t learned the names of two of them; other than Kaluza himself, the only person aboard Gretchen Tarah whose name she knew after two weeks aboard was the captain’s. Raiko Wallace, though new to Kaluza’s service, was a cool, confidence-inspiring man whose unflappable nature contrasted well with his boss’s excitability. He sat at the opposite end of the table from Kaluza, calmly watching symbols creep across the display. 

The planet depicted by a mottled orb at one side of the plot had no name, just like its stellar primary; it was an arid, barely habitable sphere with sparse native life which had been quite reasonably passed over for colonization. Despite the remoteness and insignificance of the place, Kaluza’s intelligence division had somehow gotten the impression that something valuable was to be found on the surface. That something was apparently worth hiring a mid-sized mercenary company to guard, if it was there at all. Judith had her doubts, but her company had worked with Kaluza in the past. He might be erratic, but he wasn’t often wrong. 

As the blocky symbol representing the mercenary carrier Sigismund approached the nameless planet, a handful of tiny symbols detached themselves from it. These were Zakharov Outworld’s light strike squadron departing on a probing fly-over of the target area prior to planetfall. Sigismund itself couldn’t land, of course; a trio of lumbering dropships would deploy the infantry, armored troopers, and support vehicles that made up the bulk of the company’s strength. 

Kaluza, almost quivering with anticipation, cleared his throat. “How soon will we know if it’s there?” 

Judith shook her head. “Can’t say. You gave us a location, but not much to look for. If your treasure was obvious from orbit, though, Survey would have caught it.” 

Kaluza scowled. “One would think.” He glanced back down at his wristcuff. “That’s why I hired your people.” 

Judith offered no answer; Zakharov forces would know in the next three or four minutes if they were the first ones to stake a claim on the treasure or not. Signals traffic would communicate that back to Tarah two or three minutes later. 

“You know it hardly matters now whether you tell us what we’re looking for.” Judith tried to sound uninterested. She was of course extremely interested in knowing the prize that a treasure-hunter like Kaluza was so interested in, but it hardly mattered whether he said anything; one way or the other, she was going to find out what it was in short order. 

“You know where.” Kaluza shrugged. “That’s all you need.” 

“No sense with the theatrics, Derrick.” Captain Wallace chuckled dryly. “There’s no HyperComm here. Let your mercs know what they’re looking for. It’ll help them find it.” 

Kaluza glared at his subordinate across the wardroom for several seconds. “I suppose.” He took in a long, deep breath. “There’s a ship there, mostly buried in the sand. A damned big one.” 

“A ship? You think someone tried to settle this place?” Kaluza’s education was in archaeology, so this tracked reasonably well. A big find of a lost colony expedition, well preserved, would make him rich and famous at the same time. The old style pre-2600 colony ships, especially the ones fitted out for going way out beyond the frontier, were often designed for one-way trips and safe landings, at the cost of never being able to take off again. It wasn’t unheard of for the colonists aboard these expeditions to find themselves trapped in a failing colony; that was, after all, the basis for the popular Frontier legend of the Silent Planet. 

“A non-human ship.” Kaluza didn’t seem to know whether to be pleased with himself, or annoyed with the need to explain himself. “It doesn’t match anything in the normal database, but I had some friends look at it, and they think it might be a Grand Journey ship. A really old one.” 

Judith’s eyebrows shot up. “In the Orion arm? Really?” Most every spacer had heard of the enigmatic Sagittarius xeno-polity Grand Journey, and a few had even seen the steady stream of Gilhedat diplomats who represented it passing through Maribel on their way to the Core and Confederated centers of government. The commonly-told story was that at least three species of sapient  composed the population of the Grand Journey, with each operating a different set of roles within society. Where their worlds were remained anyone’s guess; there were even stories that the polity was, like the Reachers, fully nomadic. 

“The images I could get from my source were limited. But there was no doubt it was alien. Whatever its source, it’s a find worth having.” 

Judith nodded, already tapping away a quick message to be dispatched ahead to Sigismund. “And a find worth killing to protect.” 

Kaluza nodded grimly. “That’s where you come in. If anyone’s got here before us, that will be too bad. For them.” 

Judith knew better than to add the obvious conclusion to this logic: that if those people had brought mercenaries, too, it might equally be too bad for Zakharov. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Secrecy

2953-03-05 – Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Secrecy 

As secrecy in mercenary contracts is nothing unusual, most of the breed is forced to become competent secret keepers by the strictures of the business. We get precious few submissions from mercenaries about their private contracts, with most mercenary accounts describing their war duty contracts, which are the farthest thing from secret at least after the fact. 

When we do get these stories sent to us, it is usually when the contract described has gone wrong in some way. This sort of occurrence is notably rare, but it does tend to absorb the lion’s share of the spotlight when one is discussing mercenary service, leading many to believe that double-crossing employers and being double-crossed is a regular part of the mercenary business. 

In turn, this over-focus makes both mercenaries and mercenary employers incredibly paranoid about conditions for a double-cross, which probably reduces the number of such betrayals yet further. 

“What is taking so long?” Derrick Kaluza paced up and down Sigismund’s cargo bay catwalk behind Judith Stirling and Harlan Zakharov as they watched the company stevedores shifting things around below. “We’re almost a day behind schedule.” 

“Things must be done properly.” Zakharov didn’t bother to turn around, but his deep, deliberate voice carried well over the whine of motors and the clamor of crew activity that rang the cargo bay. “We will need to unload quickly, so we must load slowly. Were it not for your lateness in delivering what you know of your foes, we could have been done three days ago.” 

Judith snuck a glance behind her at Kaluza, just enough to see his shoulders bunch up as this barb struck home. Kaluza was a regular employer of mercenaries, but that didn’t make him easy to deal with. The more she’d interacted with him in the last five days, the more she hoped the irritable salvage dealer would cancel the contract, pay them out their standard one-third no-fault fee, and go bother someone else. 

Unfortunately, Kaluza got control over himself before he turned around. “I cannot pass you intelligence I do not have, Captain Zakharov. Better to have it when we did.” 

“And better to leave three or four shifts late than to leave unprepared.” Zakharov gestured down toward the massive cargo airlock at the aft end of the bay. “Those three crate stacks will be sent to your vessel.” 

“Yes, yes.” Kaluza didn’t bother to look in the indicated direction. “Tarah has plenty of space for your spare baggage.” 

“It is not spare.” Zakharov finally turned toward Kaluza. “It will be needed, but not immediately.” 

As they glared at each other, Judith was, not for the first time, struck by how opposite they appeared; her boss was short and squat, with every facial feature round off like a stone outcrop weathered by eons of wind. By contrast, Kaluza was tall, slightly stooped, and angular in every sense of the word, with a sharp hawk’s-beak nose and high cheekbones. 

Kaluza sighed, but did not drop his glare. “Yes, yes, we will shuttle it over as soon as your bay has been unloaded on site.” 

Judith, who knew what was in at least some of those containers, looked away, lest her face betray something. Kaluza couldn’t be allowed to know that Zakharov had planned a rather significant failsafe into his own private plans for the operation. Hopefully, the failsafe would never need to be used, but Kaluza’s high-strung impatience had everyone in the know almost wishing it would be. 

“As long as you honor your end, we will honor ours.” Zakharov tapped on his slate. “We will be loaded and ready to depart in sixteen hours.” 

“It will have to do. What of your crew?”  

“Everyone who has read any of your sensitive information has not left Sigismund since doing so.” Zakharov spread his hands. “Some crew are completing shore leave, but these know only that we are in your employ. All will be aboard before we leave.” 

Judith wondered whether Kaluza knew enough about the euphemistic language of mercenaries to guess that several of the armored troopers in Zakharov’s combat detachment were at that moment sulking in the station brig. He probably did, but if so, he also knew this was fairly standard for mercenary grunts. Brawling with the locals, or drunkenness was the most common charge, but Zakharov’s troopers, being among the most unsubtle sapients in God’s creation, did sometimes get caught trying to purchase drugs or the services of a prostitute. They wouldn’t be released until the last possible moment before Sigismund departed. 

“Good. If any of them are approached by suspicious persons, let me know immediately.” Kaluza paused. “In the interim, I am going back to oversee preparations aboard Tarah.” 

“Of course.” Zakharov caught Judith’s eye and raised one heavy eyebrow, a glint of goblin mischief flitting across his lumpy face. “Do take Miss Stirling with you, in case there are other problems. She can access our comms-net and monitor progress without your needing to return before we depart.” 

Judith put on her best diplomatically neutral, helpful smile, but internally she knew she would have to find a way to make Zakharov pay for this. The man was as serious and businesslike as they came, but every so often, his sick, twisted sense of humor came out. 

Kaluza frowned. “A liaison? Shouldn’t I be leaving one with you, rather than the other way round?” 

“Send one of your people in exchange if you can spare.” Zakharov bowed slightly toward Judith. “But she knows how to help you monitor our operations.” 

“So I don’t need to ask you, eh?” Kaluza sniffed. “Well then, if you can keep me informed, Miss Stirling, come along. I’ll have someone prepare you a cabin aboard Tarah.” 

With one parting glare at her employer, Judith followed Kaluza toward the hatch leading toward Sigismund’s lift well.  

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Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Contract

2953-03-05 – Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Contract 

Judith Stirling took her time reading the contract in front of her. While the fee at the top was indeed incredible – almost unbelievable – it could not quite disguise the lack of specifics like destination and opposition. 

She read over the whole document – it was quite short – twice, just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything before clearing her throat. “You expect us to sign on before we know where we’re going? Who we’re supposed to be shooting?” 

Derrick Kaluza flashed a brief grin. “For that many credits, we are buying off any... cost of uncertainty. We would not hire your outfit if it were not very likely to accomplish our objective.” 

Doubtless this was true, but his caginess only heightened Judith’s suspicion. As the designated negotiator for the relatively large mercenary company Zakharov Outworld, she was obligated to arrange the best deal for the company’s personnel and bottom line. How could she do that if she didn’t know what they were signing to do, beyond taking and holding a set of grid coordinates on an anonymous world? 

“I can always take this to Sovereign.” Kaluza reached out for the slate displaying the contract. “They wouldn’t turn it down.” 

Judith suppressed a scowl and swatted his hand away. “I didn’t say I was turning it down.” She had lost five contracts to aggressive negotiators from Sovereign Security Solutions in the last five months. The huge merc conglomerate seemed to be everywhere at once, even though theoretically the bulk of its field forces were deployed over in Sagittarius. “But you’ve got to give us something about the hostile force, so we know what to prepare for.” 

“Do I?” Kaluza sniffed dismissively. “Perhaps. But only after you have signed, and everyone in your company is under non-disclosure. You will be permitted about a week before we depart Maribel for the target system.” 

“We?” Judith leveled a finger. “You, going into an active conflict zone? You’ve never once gotten dirt under your fingernails.” 

“I won’t be landing.” Kaluza said the word “landing” like it meant submerging oneself in sewage. “But my compatriots and I would like to be there to... congratulate Zakharov of a job well done.” 

“Ah.” In the sometimes euphemistic language of mercenary contracts, this meant he wanted to be on site to give immediate further orders and to prevent his hired muscle from changing the bargain by force majeure when they found out what it was they were guarding. Whatever it was he wanted Judith’s company to take and hold, it was valuable – far more valuable, perhaps in a very immediate sense, than the number at the top of the contract. “How much congratulation do you expect will be in order?” 

“Enough for everyone.” 

Judith nodded. This, too, was a euphemism she understood. “You do need to tell us how official this can be.” Extra-legality was nothing Zakharov had any problems with, at least in theory, but that normally went along with additional contract terms stipulating the employer would pay the company’s fines and legal fees, none of which were present in Kaluza’s contract. 

“No problems with officialdom, after the fact.” Kaluza shrugged. “But if this leaks, even to the authorities...” He spread his hands. “Well, your grunts will be the first to pay the price.” 

“We can keep things quiet.” Judith looked down at the contract. “But it will cost you.” 

“That fee already costs me plenty.” He reached out again for the slate. “I won’t be raising it.” 

Once again, Judith pulled it back. “I didn’t say it would cost you credits. I think we’re in agreement that you were quite generous with that part.” She tapped a part of the screen a bit farther down. “As long as you’re coming along in force, you might as well be so helpful as to load some things that might be useful.” 

Derrick Kaluza frowned, but quickly nodded. “I will be only too happy to coordinate our loading with your boss, after he’s been briefed. We will have our own things to carry to the site, you understand.” 

Judith smiled thinly. Perhaps Kaluza knew this was a way of making a double cross much harder to execute, and perhaps he didn’t. “I think we can work something out, then.” She stood up. “Give me an hour to talk to Mr. Zakharov. I’m sure he’ll be enthusiastic about working with your firm again.” 

Judith Stirling is obviously a psudonym, and while Zakharov Outworld is a real company, it is far too small to be the one being described in this account. No doubt the name was chosen off a registry list arbitrarily, as it is alphabetically the last mercenary company registered at Maribel. 

Nevertheless, I think this account is an accurate portrayal of events that did take place.  

[N.T.B. - I did some quick digging and have an idea as to the real identity of Judith and her employer, but she wanted to remain relatively anonymous so I will not be sharing that in this space. Duncan concurs with this decision; we will continue to use the names provided by "Judith" in the original.] 

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Tales from the Service: The Consuming Dark

2953-02-19 – Tales from the Service: The Consuming Dark 

Jerrard MacNeil had just slid back into his bunk and closed his eyes when a deep, reverberating boom, like a huge drum being struck, resonated through the ship. With a groan, he sat back up, totally unsurprised to find that Caroll had not so much as stirred at the noise. Anything could make that sort of noise, from a cargo container being dropped in the main storage bay to an engine access panel being removed, to a pressure compartment failing and blasting its contents out into the void. 

The fact that the echoes trailed away into silence and still there was no alarm suggested that it was one of the mundane sounds that one got used to on a warship. Still, Jerrard’s mind raced through a dozen scenarios where the sound meant disaster but the alarm had not sounded, and even now his fate was being decided by the frantic efforts of the partial third shift crew. 

With a groan, Jerrard got back up, put his duty boots and utility belt back on, and went out into the corridor for the second time in less than an hour. The steady, harsh glare of the main lighting suggested that normalcy reigned all throughout Vashti Mandel, but this did nothing to allay Jerrard’s fears. Rubbing his bleary eyes, he expanded his wristcuff screen and checked the ship-wide status board. Being only an enlisted tech, and off duty to boot, he could see only the general status information, but all of that looked normal. There was nothing seriously wrong with the ship’s systems. 

Even looking at a green status readout, Jerrard still shuddered in aimless horror at the idea that his fate, and the fate of the rest of the crew, was slipping through his fingers. Once again, he headed aft, toward the accessway, but this time he took the steep, spiral stairs down toward Deck Six. If he couldn’t see any sign of trouble from Mandel’s astrogation compartment, perhaps, that would satisfy his nerves. 

Even in the more populous first shift, nobody was normally stationed in astrogation. The compartment at the forward end of the long hallway that ran the length of Deck Six was intended mainly a backup bridge compartment and a position from which to check the ship’s position manually relative to visible stars. During combat, a junior ensign would be positioned there to observe weapons fire forward and to announce fire corrections to the various gunnery stations. 

The heavy blast doors opened, and Jerrard found the compartment dark and empty, as he’d expected. The outward-bowed arc of armor-glass that looked out onto purest void was covered over by its protective metal shutters, despite the astronomical odds of running into anything capable of damaging the tough material. Pulling a chair out from one of the consoles as far as it would extend, he sat down, then pulled up the shutter controls on his wristcuff.  

With a jarring clank, the shutters began to recede downward, giving Jerrard a view of the ship’s hull angling sharply away over his head, shining in the light of its own running lights. Astrogation was on the lowest habitation deck, and it projected out of the armored hull that protected most of the pressurized parts of the ship like the bulbous bow of a seagoing vessel. If one leaned against the armor-glass on either side, one could look down the destroyer’s keel line toward the bulge containing the reactor and gravitic drive. 

As the shutters revealed the emptiness beyond, no stars winked in the darkness. Perhaps if Mandel’s running lights were deactivated, the faint motes of distant supergiant stars would be visible, but the destroyer was near the middle of the Gap – there were no stars within a hundred light years. The closest large star was probably Sagittarius Gate, almost three times that distance. 

Shuddering at the pure, velvety darkness of the void, Jerrard turned his eyes onto what he could see of the ship. Mandel looked as it always did – angular, aggressive, studded with the domed outlines of weapons hidden behind their travel shielding. There was no plume of escaping gas, no corona glow of radiation, no scorch marks or rent hull plates. A proud destroyer of the Confederated Worlds all ablaze with light seemed an affront and an outrage to the emptiness in which it sailed, but what could emerge from a pure void to answer that outrage? 

A few moments of scrutinizing the ship satisfied Jerrard that all was well. Just as he turned away from the view to close the shutters, though, he thought he saw something moving up near the jutting, antenna-studded prow.  

Skin crawling, he looked up again. At first, he saw nothing, but then, as he stared, he saw something barely substantial crawling along the sharp angle where the two sloping armor panels protecting the bow met. It seemed little more than a wisp of dark vapor, but rather than dispersing, it moved with deliberation and purpose, working its way down toward astrogation. 

With a shudder, Jerrard reached for the comms earpiece in his pocket, but his hand froze halfway there. Another wispy thing had just coiled up from below astrogation and was working its way up the rounded armor-glass, invisible but for a faint glittering as its diffuse substance scattered the illumination of the running lights. This one, he could see, wasn’t an entity, not really. It was long, sinuous, and branched, a squirming, forked tentacle feeling out the surface it had touched. 

Even as he realized this, Jerrard spotted another, then another, squirming against the hard, bright hull of Mandel. They seemed to have their roots in the void itself, as if these were the alien fingers of the Gap itself.  

Jerrard found himself holding his breath. He had a sudden mental picture of the very void awakened in the form of an elder god of legend and curiously feeling out the prey which had come to it. What nightmares could possibly live in such a place? What would such a being do to the ship? To its crew? 

As if in answer to that question, a reddish orb blinked into existence out in the darkness where there was nothing to give it scale. It was not insubstantial, like the tendrils; it was wetly solid, uniform but with a suggestion of darkness deeper than any void dwelling at its center. It was, Jerrard knew, a great eye, or something much like one. He tried to cry out, to flee deeper into the ship but under its gaze, he could not rise, and could make no sound. That gaze seemed to drill through him, peeling back each layer of skin, muscle, bone, mind, and soul, examining and discarding each in an instant. There seemed to be a whispered voice chanting, but there was no rhythm, nor words, only a deep and sinister meaning. 

With a stard, Jerrard sat up, panting and drenched in sweat. He was in his bunk again – had he ever left it? Dean Caroll still slumbered on above him, oblivious to all.  

While I do not doubt the accuracy of Mr. MacNeil’s story, I attribute it only to the stresses of insomnia, a common problem among Gap spacers. He too thinks this more than likely a nightmare – there was no sign on any of the ship’s sensors or cameras of any of what he describes, and Mandel after all completed its patrol and put in here at Sagittarius Gate afterwards – but he has found other Gap spacers who have had similar enough dreams that he is not quite sure. 

Commonality among the nightmares of minds oppressed by the Gap transit should not surprise us, of course. We would be only too excited to report a credible account of some new xenolife encounter in the deep void of the Gap – such an event would challenge what we know about the limits of life and consciousness – but none of the sensational rumors of this can be traced to anything more substantial than Mr. MacNeil’s nightmare. 

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