Starship Conquistador (Conquest of Stars Book 1) (3 page)

 Remus Torus took a sigh of relief when he
received a welcome signal from one of the Starships of the Sixth Frontier
Fleet. This meant that now his ship was tagged on one of the long-range
gravitron scanners of Starfirian Army and while he still had a distance to
cover, they would watch over him for the next few days as he made his entrance
in their space.

    He had been nervous since he had left
their own space after flying past the planet Beacon which was the last habited
planet of Nestorian Republic and the last outpost that had one of their own
battleships to shoo off any pirates. Next leg of a journey over a hundred light
years contained many dangers and Remus had realized that while he had boldly
volunteered for lone travel, his stomach had totally dissented against that
bravado. He had flown his spaceship at 1,000 light speed and while it could go
twice that speed, he had conserved energy if he needed to escape some space
predator. More than 98% of space on the ship was taken by the fusion reactor that
provided power while 1% of the remaining space was the ship control room and
his personal quarters each.

    It took him approximately a month and a
half to reach the outer boundary of the Starfirian space and he had been
provided the validation codes which he sent over and were confirmed and
accepted. The rest of the journey to planet Bravo was safe and easy.
Starfirians even provided him with four of their spacefighters as escorts, more
as a show of respect for his rank than due to any need of protection.

    Planet Bravo was the headquarters of
Starfire Empire’s Sixth Frontier Fleet and the regional capital of the 30
planet star province known as Zarrvyk’s Province. Remus suspected it was named
after some ancient war hero as Starfirians were fond of naming their places.
Planet Bravo was at a distance of almost exactly 180 light years from planet
Beacon.

    The four spacefighters escorting him
had sent out a signal ahead of his arrival and the space traffic control
prioritized his spaceship to the top slot on its list of arrivals and
departures.  His escorts departed and he put his ship in the path towards the
spaceport whose coordinates the space traffic tower had beamed him. It took him
less than fifteen minutes to land his ship and he waited inside for his hosts.
As an alien dignitary he would have to be shepherded around the moment he got
out of his spaceship door and put a foot down on the land.

    A rectangular shaped airship approached
his spaceship and hovered a foot above the ground. Five Starfirians exited
through a side door, one of them was wearing a rose red colored suit over black
pants, rest were dressed in a paramilitary uniform of red button down shirt
over blue pants and a hat on top. The four of them carried laser guns in their
hands while the suited man was empty handed. He walked over to the door of
Remus’s spaceship followed by the four guards and Remus opened the door.

    “Welcome to Bravo, Vice Chancellor
Remus Torus,” the suited man said, “If you had informed us of your arrival in
advance we could have sent a cruiser to make your ride comfortable.”

    “That is generous of you but the matter
was urgent and a bit discreet,” Remus replied.

    They could talk to each other and
understand each other’s voice and language because a micro ‘voice translator’
had been planted in their larynx since childhood that contained the memory of
all the known languages and dialects of the galaxy and translated it in real
time. A similar ‘translator box’ had been implanted near their ears. Such
implants were one of the marks of true spacefaring civilizations and separated
them from primitive planet bound ones.

    “I guessed that much myself,” the
suited man chuckled, “that is why I am here. I am Chief Detective Rockvyk
Torryen of SPASI, in charge of the detective matters on this planet and the
entire Zarrvyk’s province.”

    And spy activities, Remus though. SPASI
was the Spy and Detective department of the Starfire Empire, albeit the
civilian branch and he was not surprised to be met by them.

    “Detective Rockvyk, I am here to see
Regional Star Commander,” Remus said.

    “Exactly where we are going,” Rockvyk
said and took out a metal bar from his pocket and handed it to Remus, “please
keep this with you at all time. Not that we intend to ever allow you to wander
off by yourself, but this will locate you and even protect you in ways I cannot
disclose. Now please, come with us, I will have your bags hauled up later.”

    “Thanks,” Remus said taking the metal
bar and walking out of his ship. He walked alongside Rockvyk and they got in
the airship along with the guards. The airship lifted up in the air till it
reached a height of 25 feet and then suddenly accelerated towards the city.

    Magyar “The Silencer” Harwyk landed his
personal spaceship on the moon of the planet Bravo. This planet had only one
moon and it was a stark and desolate place of chalk-like dust and granite-like
rocks, unlike the watery and leafy planet that Starfirians had found and
settled. There were barely any settlements here and what there were consisted
of research stations and military bases with energy ray cannons to protect
Bravo from invasion.

    Magyar hated to be rushed but his
client had dangled so much money in front of him that he could not resist.
Greed was likely to get him jailed or killed one day, but if he succeeded
today, he would disappear in deep space for a long hiatus. He would have to
because every SPASI detective for a hundred light years would be out looking
for him.

    He felt tired and he felt space lagged
and his plan was haphazardly put together, still he had a reputation to
maintain too. The Silencer was one of the most notorious assassins in Starfire
Empire and one with a hundred percent record. Magyar checked his laser pistol
once again and then looked through the binoculars over the deserted landscape.
He saw dust, rocks and a single building with a large telescope protruding out
in the sky. He put aside his binoculars and threw up his bag across his
shoulder and started walking very slowly to avoid bouncing off in the low
gravity of the moon.

    He came to a stop in front of the door
of the observatory and hid his pistol inside the pocket of his space jacket. He
pressed the bell a couple of times and a man in his early 30’s opened the door.

    “Yes,” the man said.

    “Was headed to Bravo but my spaceship
is sputtering and belching smoke,” he said pointing to his spaceship, “Wonder
if you have some repair parts.”

    “Not sure, I am an astronomer and don’t
know anything about spaceship engines” the man replied, “But we have parts to
repair telescope. See if some might be of dual use.”

    “Appreciate,” Magyar replied and walked
in and closed the door behind. There was a woman in her late 20s calibrating
the telescope who looked up at them.

    “Sorry for the intrusion, madam,”
Magyar smiled, “just looking for some repair parts.”

    “Oh…” she said and went back to her
work.

    “Husband and wife team?” Magyar asked.

    “No,” the man grinned, “colleagues, she
is an astronomer too.”

    Magyar smiled. Something about the
man’s grin indicated that they were more than just colleagues and a man and a
woman all alone locked up in a small building on a desolate moon and Magyar did
not have to figure further.

    “What do you folks do here?” Magyar
asked, “Why not put the telescope out near the frontier?” This he was genuinely
curious about.

    “We are cataloging asteroids,” the
woman replied, “It’s been less than a century since the Army opened up this
planet for civilian and commercial settlement. Hundreds of thousands of
asteroids still need to be entered in the Imperial Space Database.”

    “Good work,” Magyar said. The empire’s
bureaucrats were fanatic about cataloging every damn object in space. He was
glad he himself couldn’t be found in any database in the entire galaxy but that
had taken some work. Time to go to work.

    Magyar yanked out his laser pistol and
shot the man and woman dead with one laser bolt each. He felt a slight remorse
about killing unlucky bystanders; he was a professional hitman after all, not a
psychotic murderer. And if he had time to plan it out, he would have chosen to
use trick or deception to get his hands on an observatory. But time was short
and the money was large. His crimes were too many that two more did not make a
huge difference to him.

    He dragged the bodies to the corner,
took out some metallic components from his bag and went to work assembling them
into a large laser gun.

     It took him about half an hour to put
his gun together and then he mounted it on a bipod and placed the bipod on the
top of the large telescope tube. He looked through the sight of his scope and
wiped off any dust or particles on its lens with his gloved finger. Next, he
pushed a switch on a small panel attached to the telescope to make the roof of
the observatory slide off over the side walls. The sky was black and filled
with stars that twinkled brightly.

    “Let’s see what you were looking at,”
Magyar sat down on the seat behind the telescope and looked through the eyepiece.
He saw a large asteroid in his view that seemed hazy. He slowly turned the
focuser knob back and forth till the image became crystal sharp. He turned on
the laser sight of the telescope but it went out of the view.

    “Hmmm…” he muttered.

    For a moment he thought that he should
have let the woman finish calibrating the telescope fully but he had no idea
how long that would have taken her. He took up the task of calibrating the
telescope upon himself and was satisfied when the laser sight was in his view
and a green dot was visible on the asteroid. He did not need to get it exactly
in center sight and that would have taken too long.

    He looked up from the eyepiece and then
looked through his laser gun’s scope. The asteroid was too far away to be seen
even through the scope but that is why he had this telescope. He took out an
‘alignment robot’ from his bag and attached it to the telescope tube. The robot
spread two ‘wings’ in each direction to measure the diameter of the telescope
and then automatically adjusted itself to the spot that was the exact center of
the telescope tube. It was precise to less than a nanometer. He had customized
the robot by drilling out a spot in its center that was a few nanometers larger
than the diameter of his laser gun. He took off the gun from the bipod and
shoved the barrel in the hole in the center of the robot and pressed a button
to lock it in place. Now his laser gun barrel was exactly in the center of the
telescope.

    At least that was the theory, now he
had to test it out.

    He looked through the eyepiece and
reached out to the laser gun above with his finger and pulled the trigger. A
laser shot out and took off a chunk from the asteroid leaving behind some dust.
It was in the opposite corner from the green dot of the telescope’s laser
sight.

    He would have needed far more precise
instruments and a lot more time to get it exactly on the dot. But this would
do.

    He set his laser gun to continuous fire
but switched to ‘low energy’ to prevent his battery from draining. He pulled
the trigger again while watching through the eyepiece. He flicked on a switch
on telescope’s panel to display the coordinates on the lens. He memorized the
coordinates where his own laser was striking and released his finger from the
trigger. He quickly jotted down the coordinates in his small notebook that he
had placed on the table nearby.

    Then he flipped through his notebook
and came across a page where he had written down the numerical code for planet
Bravo and entered it in the telescope panel and watched the large telescope –
five meters long and one meter diameter – slowly turn itself and stop. He
looked through the eyepiece and saw planet Bravo, then he entered the
geographical coordinates for Regional Star Commander’s headquarters and after
the telescope turned a bit and locked in place he saw a garden in his view.

    Silencer smiled and sat back. Now he
just had to wait for his target to arrive.

    Remus got out of the airship along with
SPASI detective Rockvyk and looked ahead at the red gate flanked by red walls
on either side that curved around at some distance. There were soldiers dressed
in the Starfire Army uniform of Red & Black standing outside the gate
holding laser guns and a few more soldiers stood on the wall along with what he
recognized as anti-aircraft laser batteries. They walked towards the gate
accompanied by the four guards.

    “Chief Detective Rockvyk,” he said and
showed his badge to a soldier who nodded and waved him in.

    The red gate was opened by a machine
inside the walls and they strolled in when Remus asked, “They don’t scan or
verify your badge?”

    “They know me,” Rockvyk laughed, “I
come and go so often that this is practically my second office.”

    Remus looked ahead and saw a huge red
palace with intricate carvings on its walls that was the headquarters and the
residence of Starfire Empire’s regional commander. On either side of the door
just behind the walls were trees and soldiers stood in a line in front of the
trees. Soldiers also stood outside the walls of the palace that were surrounded
by lush green gardens interrupted by rows of red, violet and orange roses.
There was a path made of white stone that led to the front door of the palace
from the red gate but the grounds on either side were empty.