Starship Conquistador (Conquest of Stars Book 1) (10 page)

Capitan Jag Manus let the Nectar’s space
traffic administration guide his plane through the incoming queue and landed it
on a spot on one of the spaceports that was assigned to him. There was no
question of trying to evade the space scanners and the radars on this planet.
Nectar had a significant population of 73 million people and a well-developed
civilian and military infrastructure. It was an oceanic planet with two small
continents which had been colonized and settled by the Nestorians. The
temperature was mild and the climate similar to the home planet of Nestor. If
it hadn’t been so far out towards the frontiers it would have attracted a much
larger settlement.

    Jag Manus fetched a taxi at the
spaceport. It was a small airship with two seats up front for the pilot and the
passenger and four seats in the back. Jag was alone in the taxi airship with
the taxi pilot.

    “Where to mister?” Taxi pilot asked.

    “Headquarters of Boutrous Golus,” Jag
replied.

    The taxi pilot raised up the airship
fifty feet in the air and then rapidly accelerated into the taxi air lane. Jag
was thrown back against the seat and he clutched the handle above the window to
keep him steady.

    “You haven’t punched in the
coordinates,” Jag said when he realized the airship’s navigation system was
off.

    “I know the location by heart,” Taxi
Pilot replied, “A lot of folks from other worlds come to visit that company.”

    Jag thought for a second and then
asked, “Did any political or military big shot from Nestor ever come here for a
visit to Boutrous Golus.” He realized the possibility that this particular taxi
pilot had flown one was very small but it didn’t hurt to inquire.

    “Hmmm…” the taxi pilot thought for a
few seconds and then said, “I never get an opportunity to fly big shots because
my airship is too small for their guards and the luggage. But my friend who
owns a twenty-seat air taxi did fly the Commander of the Republican Guard a
while back.”

    Jag was startled from this revelation
but he didn’t show any expressions on his face.

     “What is his name…?” taxi pilot asked.

    “I don’t know,” Jag said. That was not
the kind of fact a civilian would know off the top of his head and if he
displayed the knowledge the taxi pilot could suspect him of being another
government agent. He put on his headphones and played music so that the pilot
would not pry into his identity and nature of the visit as taxi pilots were of
times want to do.

     The flight to Boutrous Golus’
headquarters lasted a few minutes short of an hour. It was a two floor building
spread out across a wide acreage and was surrounded by lush gardens and then by
forests at a distance. The airship landed on the empty grounds in front of the
building. Jag paid a few bills of Nests to the taxi pilot and then walked
towards the front door.

    Normally the headquarters of big
companies on Nestor were very tall skyscrapers with air pads strutting out from
multiple floors. Land was in short supply there but here it was in abundance.
The airships could just park anywhere outside the building.

    Jag Manus hoped that the company would
not throw him out for lack of a search warrant. He had to be careful and
diplomatic and while getting a warrant would not be a problem that would
officially register the investigation into the court system and a lot of people
had access to that data.

    He opened the door and walked into the
lobby. The reception lady greeted him with a smile but the four armed guards
standing two on each side with their laser guns eyed him warily. They had never
seen him before. He was not surprised by their presence, after all the company
sold machines to the army.

    “I would like an appointment with the
chief executive of your company,” Jag said to the receptionist.

    The smile on her face evaporated and
was replaced by a frown. Who was this man to just walk in and demand an
appointment like that?

    “I am sorry, I can’t just…”

    “Tell him…”

    “It’s Mrs. Tory Golus,”

    “Tell her that a representative of
Vice-Chancellor Remus wants to meet her,” he handed his Republican Guard ID to
her and she looked at it keenly. A guard walked over to the reception desk and
the lady handed him the card. He observed it for a few seconds and then
replied, “It’s genuine.”

    The lady then called the office of Tory
and conveyed the message.

    “She will see you now,” the receptionist
said and pointed towards the stairs. Jag walked upto the next floor and
followed the signs to her office. It was a big, spacious office with a large
wooden desk and a chair that was too big for the woman in it. Tory Golus
appeared in her late forties, her hair came down in front of her till her
breasts, and her face was long and narrow with high cheekbones but had slightly
aged.

    She stood up with a smile and said, “I
didn’t know VC Remus was interested in our business.”

     “I will come to that later,” Jag Manus
said and took a seat in front of the table. He looked at the two picture
frames; one had a photo of her with a slightly older man and two teenage
children. Another frame had a photo of a very old couple. Jag pointed to that
photograph and asked, “Is that your father Mr. Boutrous Golus?”

    “It is,” she replied, “They died long
time ago but my parents had me very late, when both of them were in their
forties.”

    “I believe your father maintained a
master account on all the long range gravitron scanner databases that his
company manufactured,” Jag asked.

    “For testing, but what is this about.”

    “Can anybody in this company still
access them?” Jag asked.

    “Mr. Manus,” Tory said, “You can’t just
come in here with questions like that. You are an officer in Republican Guard
but come with no warrant.”

    “It is an investigation I am running,”

    “Then I should have my counsel
present,” Tory said, “And no doubt he will tell you to get a warrant.”

    “You don’t want to do that,” Jag said.

    “I don’t want to? Why not?” Tory asked.

    “It concerns an investigation into an
assassination attempt on our vice-chancellor,” Jag said.

    “That’s terrible,” Tory gasped and
leaned back in her chair, “But I heard no news.”

    “We are keeping it a secret and I urge
you to not mention this to anyone,” Jag said, “Mrs. Golus your company receives
a lot of military contracts. VC Remus is the civilian leader whom general Bakus
answers to. You don’t want to make me jump through hooves.”

    Tory thought for a few seconds while
twirling her pen in her hand and then said, “We are supporters of VC Remus. Our
company even donated funds to his election campaign. What help do you need?”

    “A list of names of your employees who
can access your father’s master account on army gravitron scanner,”

    “You got it,” she typed a message on
her computer to her assistant and then said, “She will bring a printed copy.
But Mr. Manus, I don’t know what clues you are following, but this will be a
dead end for you.”

    “Why?”

    “The master account of my father is
there only because it requires a special password to delete it and he took it
with him to his grave,” she said, “We have never accessed it and how could we.
None of my companies’ employees would be allowed to enter the computer room or
log on a computer with gravitron database. That is an inert account that can
never be used.”

    “Have you given its password to an army
person who could, for example commander of my republican guard who visited you
a while back?” Jag said.

    “No, never,” Tory replied, “And he did
visit us but it wasn’t an official government visit. He was meeting an old
friend of his whom he took out for lunch.”

    “Who?”

    “I believe it was Mr. Aurus Janus,” she
said, “he is on an extended vacation to Nestor.”

    As they were talking Tory’s assistant
walked in the office with a printed list and set it down on the table.

    Jag quickly picked it up and looked
through the names. There were six names on the list with Tory Golus on the top
and Aurus Janus second from bottom. This was the man he needed to investigate.
But he said nothing to her.

    “Thank you Mrs. Golus,” Jag got up with
the list in his hand, “I do have another question but it doesn’t concern this
company. By any chance, does this planet have a facility to beam a very long
range signal across deep space?”

    “Define long,” Tory said.

    “Hmmm…I don’t know,” Jag said, “a
hundred to two hundred light years across.”

    “We are the only institution on Nectar
that has a space signal facility with that long of a range,” Tory said.

    “Mrs. Tory you are going to hate me for
asking this,” Jag leaned forward with both of his hands on the desk and grinned
at her, “But I really, really would appreciate a list of names who are
authorized to use that facility.”

    “You ask too much but it’s for our
vice-chancellor,” Tory sighed then spoke to her assistant, “Get Mr. Manus a
printed copy of that list. You can follow her.”

    “Thank you,” Jag said and followed the
assistant out of the office room to a computer lab where her assistant printed
out a list. He compared both of them as he walked downstairs. There were eight
names on this list with Mrs. Tory Golus on top once again. He was not surprised
that there was much overlap between the two lists as the top managers of the
company would have the most access to its facilities. But there was that name
again: Aurus Janus. Who was this fella?

    Jag Manus fired up the thrusters of his
spaceship and soared into Nectar’s stratosphere. He was going back home to
Nestor and he hoped to catch this man Aurus Janus before he ended his vacation.
He could have sent a signal out ahead to the Republican Guards to detain him
till Manus returned. But he was supposedly an old friend of Commander Nolfus
Berrum who could cancel any such order he issued. Then he would have to get VC
Remus to override Nolfus and he would have earned an enemy for the rest of his
time in the guards. He didn’t want to do that. And he didn’t want to alert
Aurus before he had a chance to question him.

    And what was Commander Nolfus’s
involvement in this whole sordid affair? Nolfus wasn’t the nicest of the
persons but he was an honorable man and Jag could not contemplate any grievance
he had against Remus. It could be a mere coincidence. After all the Republican
Guards provided security to private military suppliers and Nolfus could have
befriended Aurus during one such arrangement.

    Whatever the case the answers lay back
home on Nestor.

    Suddenly his spaceship was rocked by a
multitude of laser blasts and the computer automatically tried to stabilize and
regain the original route.

    “What the hell?”

    He looked at his radar and saw four
spacefighters closing in on him. His computer could not identify their make or
model which was surprising since his spaceship database contained information
on all the spaceships operating in Nestorian Space.  He grabbed the sticks and
maneuvered in a zig-zag fashion to avoid the laser fire which was continuous.

    “Citizen calling for Help! Citizen
calling for help!” Jag yelled over his radio to whomever might be listening.
Unfortunately he didn’t know the exact frequency that authorities on this
planet used or monitored.

    The attackers were clever and knew the
army’s procedures. Four spaceships chasing another craft might raise hackles in
the radar operations room but they wouldn’t dispatch army spacefighters to
investigate unless they saw a rocket shoot out of a spaceship on their screens.
Lasers were invisible on radio.

    Jag Manus accelerated his ship to the
maximum recommended to attain escape velocity. He had to hit light speed as
fast as possible then if the spacefighters launched faster than light rockets
at him it would light up on Army’s gravitron scanners.

    The lasers were splattering off of his
spaceship and taking off chunks here or there. His spaceship was armored as
well as armed but only with lasers and no rockets.

    He activated his rear lasers but they
mostly missed the pursuers. He had no time to pay attention to them and let the
computer try to fire them at the targets. The spacefighters computers
recognized another computer’s pattern and decoded the firing algorithm and
avoided the incoming lasers.

    He accelerated beyond the planet’s
atmosphere and left Nectar behind but the spacefighters kept chasing and kept
shooting lasers at him. If he accelerated too fast within the gravity field of
Nectar his fuel would run out before Nestor and would have to stop somewhere
along the way and risk another ambush. But he had no choice.

    He punched in the keys for maximum
acceleration and overrode the computer warnings. His spaceship rapidly
accelerated towards light speed and his fuel gauge started dropping as loads of
fuel was rapidly consumed to accelerate against the strong gravitational force.