A Pirate's Tale: The Only Solution Is Retribution (2 page)

The Captain’s face showed his shock, “I’m not kidding!!”

“Go ahead.  If you think your crewman can hit me without hitting the bulkhead or another passenger, go for it.  I feel I must tell you that if he even starts to pull the trigger, I will take that blaster and shove it up your backside!”

The Captain stared at the young man as the crewman put the blaster on the back of the young man’s head.  In an instant, the crewman was holding his hand and it was clear two fingers were broken.  The young man had the blaster and held it out grip first to the Captain, “Please take it.  You’re pretty good at putting your crew in danger.  Let’s see if you have the courage to do your own dirty work.  Please, take it, Captain!”

The Captain’s face was white and showed his fear as the other passengers in first class began yelling at him.  They called him names that the young man decided he should be writing down for later use.  It was clear they did not appreciate the Captain’s behavior.  The young man stood up and stuck his face back in the Captain’s, “If you bother me again, you won’t be able to command a liner for six months!”  The young man moved the blaster in his left hand and held out the blaster’s power pack.  The Captain’s eyes grew wider; a power pack could not be removed without special tools and this man had taken it out in a couple of seconds with just one hand.

“Who are you?”

“Your worst nightmare if you bother me again!”  He looked at the crewman, “You need to get those fingers looked at.”  He sat back down and ignored the Captain, who walked out of the first class section to the jeers of the other occupants.  The young woman sat in the rear of the section and wondered, like the Captain, who was this man? 

• • •

When the ship landed, the young man stood up, retrieved his backpack out of the storage bin, and walked calmly to the landing bay where the Captain was standing with two Proctors.  The Captain pointed the young man out and one of the Proctors raised a device and pointed it at him.  He studied the small display on the device and nudged the other Proctor with his elbow.  The other Proctor looked at the device and they stepped aside as the young man walked past them.

The Captain watched them and said sternly, “What are you doing?!”

The ranking Proctor looked at the Captain, “You say you threatened him with a blaster?”  The Captain nodded.  The Proctor snorted, “We are going to recommend that you be relieved of your command and never be allowed to command another ship.”

“WHY?!”

“You deliberately threatened a Purple Card Warrior.  You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”  The young woman who was following the young man out of first class, lingered to hear the Proctors.  She began moving quickly through the crowd to catch up to him.  He stopped suddenly and turned toward her, “Why are you chasing me?”

“I need to talk with you!”

He tilted his head slightly, “I’m sorry about your parents, but….”

“Don’t be.  My father saved my life by taking his own.  He also saved my sister and her baby.  However, I heard you say you intend to kill that Pirate.”

The young man lowered his eyebrows, “That is between me and John Blakely.”

“It won’t cost you anything to listen but a few moments of your time; talk with me!  Please!”

The man sighed and stepped aside.  She walked past him and saw her sister rushing out of the gathered crowd carrying her baby.  The young woman hugged her sister and said, “I’ll talk to you about what happened later.  I have something to do first.”

Her sister’s eyes were red and tearful as she said, “What is more important than telling the family what happened?”

“Making the one that did it pay for his actions!!”  The sister glanced at the young man watching them and nodded in agreement as she walked away.

• • •

Two armored security guards carrying shoulder blasters came up to the young woman as they walked off the Starliner and she waved them away.  They stepped aside but continued to follow them at a discrete distance.  The woman walked into a restaurant on the departure level in the space port and went to a corner table.  She sat down and the young man pointed to the other side of the booth, “Pardon me, but you should sit there.”

“Why?”

The young man smiled, “My Grandfather told me that one should never put their back to an open room.”

“My father told me the same thing.  Come over here and sit beside me if you want to see the room.” 

The young man stared at her for a few moments and then went to her side of the booth and sat down beside her, “What do you wish to discuss?”

“First things first; what’s your name?”

“Leo.”

“Ok, I can see you’re going to be evasive so let’s cut to the chase.”

Leo smiled, “I highly recommend you do.  I have things to do and you’re preventing me from doing them.”

“Before we start, I heard one of the Proctors say that you are a Purple Card Warrior.  What exactly is that?”  Leo stared at her and didn’t answer.  “I want to make you an offer and I want to make sure you’re capable of doing what I need.”

“Exactly what do you need?”

“Were you serious about killing that pirate?”

“Pretty much every sentence I’ve ever heard with the word ‘killing’ in it was extremely serious.” Leo replied.

“I want to kill that pirate but the reality of my being able to do it is remote.  Can you do it?”

The young man stood up and she grabbed his arm, “Please, don’t go!”

“Then you better give me one good reason why I should continue listening to this nonsense.”

“I will support your effort to do it.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed, “Support?”

“You must be aware of who my father is, I mean was?”

“I have no idea who he was and what does that have to do with our discussion?”

“My father was the wealthiest man in this quadrant.”

Leo stared at her and sat back down, “I don’t want to call you a liar, but I’ve seen the list of the top twenty five wealthiest families in this quadrant, and your father’s name wasn’t on the list.”

“That pirate attacked our liner to get at what my father had placed in the wall safe.  That should tell you something.”

“That doesn’t make him one of the wealthiest men in this quadrant.  I do know his name is not on the wealthiest list.”

“That’s because he uses his mother’s maiden name and not his own when he travels.”

“What is his name?”

Serge Ohaulo Romanov.”  The young man stared at her in silence.  She waited and finally broke the silence, “I’m reasonably sure you doubt what I’m telling you.”

“You think?”

“What’s the main reason you don’t believe me?”

“Well, for starters, why would the richest man on this side of the galaxy be traveling with his family without defenses to protect them?  That’s not something that a smart merchant would do and I’m certain the head of the Romanov Family wouldn’t do it either.”

“He wouldn’t trust anyone else with this transfer.”

“Why not.”

“Because anyone else would have given in to that pirate and revealed the code to save themselves.”

“Your father was pretty stupid for not giving it to them.  Wealth can be replaced but there is no replacing dead.”

“There were eight trillion credits in that safe, Leo.” 

For the first time, she saw the young man show emotion, “That’s impossible!!  No safe can hold that many credits!!  Hell, four ships that size couldn’t hold it.”

“The safe had two hundred and twenty pounds of Trillium in it estimated to be worth eight trillion credits.”

Leo leaned back in the booth, “Why, for creation’s sake, would anyone be moving that rarest of metals on a commercial liner?  A tenth of an ounce of trillium is worth more than the entire liner and a gram of it would destroy an entire city out to two hundred miles.  A few atoms of Trillium injected into a reactor will extend the life of the fuel ten times its normal life.  Moving that much on a Starliner is absurd!”

“Because of the sheer audacity of it.  No one would ever expect him to do it and he thought using his mother’s maiden name would allow him to go unnoticed.”

“Someone noticed!”

“I know.  And they knew he had the code to the safe.  My father would have let all of us die and never reveal the code.”

“Why?”

“Because more than a billion middle class workers on our planet gave him their life savings to invest in a new company.  They would have been destitute if he had given the pirate that code.  He chose to die first.”

“What happens now that he’s dead and no one knows the code?”

“I know it.”

“WHAT!!!  You’ve got to be…”

“What, crazy?”

Leo sighed, “That pirate had information that could only have been passed to him by someone occupying a high position inside your father’s company.  They knew about your mother, sister, and you, as well as your sister’s baby, traveling with him.  They also knew the name your father was using.”

“I don’t think they knew what was in the safe.”

Leo stared at her and then slowly nodded, “You’re right.  The pirate would not have flown away so quickly if he knew how much was in it.  He would have brought a pirate fleet with him to take possession.”

“It would have been a waste of time.  Without the code, the safe could not be opened without destroying the contents.”

“Were the contents insured?” Leo asked.

“No, to start with, who would insure that much and purchasing the insurance, if anyone was willing to take that sort of risk, would have made the contents known to others that would possibly take the risk of stealing it.  Like I said, my father was audacious.”

“Whoever educated that pirate didn’t know you knew the code.”

“Or that the woman traveling with my father was not his wife.”

Leo lowered his head, “You certainly made it appear she was; your grief looked genuine.”  The woman shrugged.  Leo looked out across the restaurant and after a few moments, said, “I suspect she was in with whoever set your father up.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, “She wasn’t my mother but she was considered a close part of my family.  I did love her and she would never do anything to harm us.”

“Then how did the pirates find the ship?”

“What?”

“How did the pirates find the ship?  I heard two of the crew talking in the crowd while everyone was being rounded up and they said they had not followed the normal course the liner used after its first stop to go to Kellinger; they took a completely different pattern of filaments.  The only way for the pirates to find the liner was to have someone on board with a subspace digital transmitter who would activate it once it left for Kellinger.  I feel reasonably certain that your father had his organization screen anyone traveling on that ship, at least I think he’d take no chances of someone being on board that would place his metal in danger.  That means, it had to be someone he trusted who wouldn’t be scanned.”  She stared at him in silence and then he said as he tilted his head, “I wondered why the pirate killed the woman he thought was your father’s wife first.  You always save the one that’s closest to the target for last.  Meaning no disrespect, your father has two daughters but only one wife.  That tells me they knew she wasn’t his wife.  It sort of confirms for me that even if your father was going to give them the code, John Blakely had orders to kill the woman traveling with your father.”

“Which would remove a possible witness to what was going on,” the young woman replied with a sigh.

Leo nodded, “I suspect if you examine the woman’s body before anyone can get to it, you’ll find the transmitter somewhere inside her along with a wireless activator in her purse or pocket.”

The woman lifted a communication device out of her purse and pressed a button.  “I want Lyla’s body held.”  She listened and said, “WHAT?!”  She abruptly ended the call, “Her body was picked up before we exited the liner.  Someone claiming to be a family member had the paperwork authorizing them to take her.”

“Why does that surprise you?”

“What you said makes sense but Lyla had no family.  Whoever took her body was working for someone other than my father.”  She thought for a moment and said, “My name is Anastacia Romanov.  You can call me Ana.  I’ve just seen a message on my communicator and the military forces have arrived to transfer the contents of the safe to the Unity’s Treasury and need me to open the safe.”

“How dependable are the forces making the transfer?”

“They’re Round Table Guards.”

Leo’s eyes widened, “No one is going to try and take them on.”

Ana nodded, “The only place where the contents were in danger was out in open space while being transported to the Treasury here on Kellinger.  They missed the opportunity to get it there.”

“By the way, what company is your father investing in?”

“A friend of my father has invented a means of teleportation.”  Leo was stunned by her answer.  “My father proved the process actually works and was given ninety-nine percent ownership if he could deliver eight trillion credits to the Unity’s Treasury here on Kellinger today.  If this new technology existed yesterday, my father would still be alive.  We’d have just teleported the Trillium from our planet to the Treasury here.”

“Now I see how the pirates were persuaded to do this.”

“How is that, Leo?”

“Piracy will be a thing of the past if no ships are carrying anything of value.  If cargo can be teleported directly to its destination, pirates will be put out of business.  It’s in their best interests to prevent this new technology from being developed.”

Ana sighed, “You’re right, who would need ships.  Just step through a door to the planet you want to go to.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed, “That would end Pirates all together.  I have a suggestion.”

“What is that?”

Leo told her and her eyes flew wide open.  She picked up her communicator and before activating it, she asked, “Is Leo your real name?”

“My name is Leonidas Alexander Piper.  You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”

“I’m willing to offer you ten percent of this new company along with the necessary funds to purchase whatever you need to capture Pirate John Blakely.”