Andrew the Agent

 

It’s never a good time to be a spy. It’s always dangerous to a greater or lesser degree. Usually greater, as in this case. My mission required the elimination of a target in a foreign country and the securing of another individual for transport from said country. I accomplished the mission, but now we’re unable to get out of the country. The longer we stay the more likely we will be tracked down, discovered and caught. Who would have thought a pandemic would foil my mission?

When I left the US for Italy to intercept the Iranian scientist defector and kill his uncooperative partner, the chance of a pandemic locking down the world was only a whisper in the higher ranks of the government. It wasn’t enough to put my mission on hold. If we held off, we would have missed the opportunity to secure an essential key player in the international arms race. Javid held classified information in his head that the Iranian’s would not want leaked to the US. He was allowed to visit Italy for a conference, but it was only a window of twenty-six hours to work with.

I had to get him out, but at this point it was impossible.

Maximillian the Meticulous

 

Max heard the chime notifying him that his delivery had arrived in the box attached to his safe room. He had time. It would take the box a few minutes to run its decontamination program. Even though he was in a hurry to see what had arrived from his black-market contact, there was no rush. He would finish his toilet. He brushed his teeth and combed his short gray hair. He took the time to wash and polish his glasses and run a razor over his morning stubble. He slipped on his sweats and headed for the waiting package.

Each month Max paid an enormous amount to procure a package such as this. Sometimes the contents were worth the price and more… Sometimes he was gravely disappointed. He hoped this month would bring something worthwhile. He was expecting company and wanted to show it off.

Dan the Deliverer

 

I need a new hazmat suit. I went over mine last night with the approved sealer, but I just don’t trust it. I’ve asked for a new one for the past three weeks. No one seems to care. I’m not in a Level I delivery district. I’m not even in a Level II or III. I service a Level IV. I am fooling myself to think that I am high enough priority to get a new suit. Heck, I’d settle for a used one in better condition than mine.

As much as I’d like to procrastinate, I eventually slip on my suit and head to the supply depot for my load of daily deliveries. I’m lucky in some sense, because most of my Level IV deliveries are small. Residents of the Community Units don’t have a lot to spend.

I get my truck loaded up by 6:00 am and I’m at my first stop by 7:00 am. My Level IV district is on the outskirts of town.

Star Trader Update .042

042.01

Tal’on watched the green come and go as he finished up his meal. She dragged in numerous things that looked like their skins, but were in large squares. She spread one out on the stone beneath her feet and piled the others at her side. After making several trips she appeared to tire and sweat formed on her brow to dampened the fur that fell across it. Tal’on watched with horror, his mouth full of the last morsel off his platter, as she shed her outer skin and threw it to the ground. She proceeded to pull off another layer of her skin and wiped her face with it before she tossed it to the pile on the large skin. She now stood with only a layer of green around her chest and covering her legs. The rest of her, neck, shoulders, arms, appeared as her hands and face, pale and soft. Tal’on didn’t realize it, but his mouth was hanging open in surprise.

Star Trader Update .040

040.01


Tal’on vaulted onto Graf’tal’s haunches, finding purchase with his claws between the plates of his senior’s scales.

“Careful there youngling,” Graf’tal chided. He curled his long neck around and spied the young wingless dragon, his charge, with a shinny pair of obsidian black eyes rimmed and flecked with gold. “Why can’t you mount like any normal youngling?” He snorted smoke into the face of the lizard looking Tal’on on his back. “You scramble like a hatchling.”

“I would board properly by wing if we were not always the last to leave the ground,” Tal’on shot back as he finally made it up Graf’tal’s back and settled on the dragon’s shoulders with his scaly legs wrapped around Graf’tal’s neck and his tail lying out along the dragon’s spine.

Star Trader Update .039

039.01

“Say that again,” Jake said. He looked at me like he thought I had lost my mind.

“It was a dragon,” I repeated.

Jake got up from his place in my co-pilot’s seat on the bridge and took a few paces away from me. He removed his cap and ran his fingers through his dark, wavy hair. This was a habit Jake had when thinking, stressed or otherwise irritated. He could have been all three after my statement.

“What did you see?” Jake asked Arr.

“It was a dragon,” Arr confirmed.

Star Trader Update .038

038.01

At first, I didn’t know what woke me. I was just jolted awake by some unfamiliar noise. But then the sound rattled the hull of Ma-rye-a again. There was no mistaking it. It was Kay-o bellowing at the top of his lungs. His booming howl vibrated my chest as if I had the bass tuned up way too high on Ma-rye-a’s sound system.

“What the…” I started to swear.

I tumbled out of bed and headed out of my room and down the hall toward the guest room where Jake, Arr and Kay-o chose to spend the night rather than pod back over to their ship. We had a few too many drinks. They considered that room theirs anyway, so had tucked in for the night.

The fact that I had one too many before retiring, was not helping my navigation down the hall. Jake came crashing out of the guest room. We collided head on.

“What the…” Jake said.

Star Trader Update .037

037.01

“I’ll be fine,” I assured Marstead. “I think I need space. I need my mind to work on something other than who might be waiting to grab me next time I go into the city. For that matter, who might break into my ship and wreak more havoc.”

“I can’t keep you safe out there,” Marstead waved his hand in the general direction of everything. I was glad he was on the comlink rather than here beside me or he might have managed to convince me to stay. I really didn’t know why I was going. I just had a gut feeling I needed to go to my parent’s dig. Or, maybe that gut feeling was the breakfast Moby made for me that wasn’t settling very well.

“You don’t need to keep me safe, Marstead.” I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “I am a big girl and I can take care of myself.” Yeah, right. Some of my friends could tell stories about that. “I’ll keep in contact. I’ll send messages daily if that will make you feel better. It’s not that far away. I can be there in no time.”

Star Trader Update .036

036.01

“Calm down,” Daniel soothed. “I can fix this.”

I thumbed tears from my eyes. I know I looked pitiful. I am not one of those pretty criers. My face gets all blotchy and my eyes turn red.

“How?” I asked in disbelief.

Even though I had total confidence in Daniel I thought it was hopeless. I actually called him because I knew I could not function in my profession without an AI to handle the loading and unloading of cargo. I figured I would have Daniel program me another as soon as possible.

Star Trader Update .035

035.01

“Tilt your head a little further toward me,” the dentist instructed.

I obliged and felt the jaw mike snap into place over my back molar.

“That should do it,” she announced. “Give it a try.”

I ordered the mike over a year ago, but hadn’t been anywhere with the facilities to install it. This layman’s variety of a jaw mike, unlike the Galactic Forces model, was not actually installed in the jaw surgically. Theirs was far more sophisticated. For this model, the wearer had one of their back molar’s ground down like you were prepping for a crown, but instead the mike was fit over the tooth.

I leaned up and took my “Ear” out of my pocket and stuck it in.

Star Trader Update .034

034.01

I sat in the lounge aboard my ship flipping through the pictures on mom and dad’s flat.

“How old were you there,” Horus asked.

Horus is one of five disembodied AIs I have on board my ship. All of them programmed by my dear friend, Daniel Dresden, one of – if not the most, talented programmer in the verse. Why he chose me as a friend I will never know, because I don’t know squat about programming and couldn’t carry on a conversation about software if I tried. That said, I really do appreciate Daniel’s handiwork especially when I am on long deliveries by myself, because heck, I am never really by myself. Space is a lonely place, but I always have company.

Star Trader Update .033

033.01

It was yet another day and my third without a decent night’s sleep. This time Marstead sat across from me behind the desk in his office on the sixty-fourth floor of the Marstead building. I told you he was a famous trial attorney. He dabbles in other things as well.

“I know you are familiar with all this, but we have to go through it to satisfy the legality of the estate’s distribution and closing,” Marstead explained.

Collin, Marstead’s assistant, came in carrying a tray with all the accouterments for tea. He set the tray down on the table between the two Chippendale sofas behind us. Once he set the service off, poured, and placed the small two tiered plate of savories and sweets in place, he nodded Marstead’s direction.

“Will you give us about fifteen minutes and then bring it in?” Marstead asked.

Star Trader Update .032

032.01

I stood before the columbarium pillar containing my parent’s cremated ashes. I arrived almost six months too late to attend their funeral. Leaning forward, I placed my hand on the carved surface of the pillar. The pillar was not new to me. Mom and Dad always thought ahead. They had it carved years ago after seeing the Goe’ze pillars on Muldavia. They were both archaeologists and appreciated beautiful, ancient ruins. The Goe’ze pillars are one of the wonders of the universe. Their surfaces reflect and refract the breathtaking sunsets of Muldavia. This pillar, my parent’s memorial tomb, was artificially enhanced to radiate the colors from within along with a holographic image of my parents, smiling lovely, out from just above their niche. The pillar was carved years ago and set in storage to await their needed time. That time came much too soon.

Marstead Grievus shifted his weight as he stood at my side. He was Mom and Dad’s solicitor. When I informed him I had arrived he offered to meet me here, at the cemetery on the site of the UOA. I accepted the offer with my heartfelt thanks. This was not easy. My parents were still young, just in their seventies. They hadn’t even talked about retirement. They were so happy doing what they did, being members of the Universal Order of Antiquities. My parents were experts in their field. If they did not discover it themselves, then they were called in to consult with whoever did make the discovery.

“I recorded the funeral,” Marstead offered. “You might want to watch it someday. There were an inordinate amount of testimonials given. Your parents were truly loved.”

Star Trader Update .031

031.01

The whole thing turned out to be a bit anticlimactic. Once the Hummer Arr was talking to understood that the Calpernia, which is what it related to, could fix the problem, the Hummer started bouncing the code out to the Hummers it was connected to, they bounced it to the next group until all the other Hummers in all the NBs throughout the Verse had a copy and the fix for the virus.

All this time the Valarians thought each Hummer team, in each NB, was an isolated entity, but all along they were connected and had been talking to each other all this time. It was truly amazing.

Our part was finished. The NBs were back online. All the backed up traffic was being routed properly and within a week or so even the outlying areas were back to operation as usual.

The only thing left to deal with was Zackary Taylor.

Star Trader Update .030

030.01

“Sam are you set?” I asked.

I had Ma-rye-a turn around and place us just outside of the window and off to the left, out of the way. I had Sam train our weapons on the mouth of the window. His reaction, and recognition time was far superior to mine and if the Tiltode came though that gate either alone or chasing the Calpernia, I wanted to be prepared.

“Ready and waiting, Captain,” Sam replied.

He had no sooner spoken than the Calpernia came sailing through unhindered. Jake pulled his ship up beside Ma-rye-a as soon as he caught sight of her and Ma-rye-a threw his and Arr’s imagine up on the viewport.

“You okay?” he asked with a concerned look.

Star Trader Update .029

029.1

Claiming to know someone who could talk to the Hummers was taking a wee bit of convincing until Coal managed to pull up some info on his computer about by friend, Arr, Jake Harcourt’s partner. Seemed a doctor named Margaret O’Connor was doing a bit of a study on him and she had recorders that attested to his ability to learn languages faster than a Roughnut snake can swallow a gerbit. You see, Arr’s people all have genetically inherited memories - abilities that are passed from generation to generation in the basic makeup of their brains. Arr can learn languages just by listening to them. Within a few hours he can master any language. Last count he gave me was one hundred and one, and that’s fluent, not just counting to ten and asking where the restroom is located.

A while back Arr and I were stuck in adjoining hospital beds for an extended period of time. We had a lot of time to exchange stories as we healed. That story is in my log books as “Body Bags and Other Dark Places” if you wish to look it up. Anyway… Arr told me about Jake explaining to him how the NBs worked - that they each held a Hummer inside. Arr was trapped alone on a planet for several years until Jake found him. Arr was shocked to think the Hummers were isolated in the NBs. He wanted to talk to them to make sure they were okay with what he saw as captivity. So Jake parked their ship, the Calpernia, by one and Arr took a few hours to learn their language and reassure himself that they were quite content as they were.

Arr told me this story, along with a string of others, and I remembered it.

Star Trader Update .027

027.01

I don’t have a sick-bay aboard Ma-rye-a, so Damion was in the guest room with a dying patient in each bed with nothing more than my first-aid kit. I don’t usually need intensive medical treatment. My medical supplies are geared toward a headache or the flu.

The way Damion explained it was that by the Valarians injecting Daniel with anhydrates, his body was full of what must have felt like small medieval maces floating around inside him.

Targus, on the other hand, almost had his arm torn off.

Damion needed a ship load of painkillers, a well-equipped surgery for Targus and an ultrasound-stimulator to break up the rocks in Daniel’s system. Headache and nausea patches were not going to do the trick.

Star Trader Update .024

024.01

Zackary Taylor a.k.a. Matt Milestone sat at his computer diligently working. He used a VACP or voice activated command program to put the finishing touches on the computer virus he was creating. Like his character, Matt Milestone, he liked the physical. However, his real body was stuck in a servo-chair and had been for the past ten years since the accident that put him there. He couldn’t even scratch his nose let alone do the physical activity Matt ran through in the game.

The accident was a devastating chemical explosion which killed fifty-three and left Zack and hundreds of others maimed. The loss to the corporation was horrific and sent it into bankruptcy and eventually foreclosure. None of the survivors received any kind of settlement. Zack’s medical bills were so astronomical he gave up on the rehab and the possibility of prosthetics long ago. He ate and defecated through tubes. He was basically a brain in a chair and nothing more.

Star Trader Update .023

023.01

It was snowing and I really didn’t want to deal with this. Snow is fine if you are inside, wrapped in a lovely throw, sitting in front of a fire (artificial or not) with a cup of hot chocolate, but it is not fun when you are standing in it, spacer boot deep, being denied entry into your best friend’s house by what is the equivalent of a Love Bot.

“I am sorry, but he is indisposed at the moment.” The Bot had the most irritating voice. High pitched and sing-song. Her candy ass stood blocking the door – all dressed in black with pink polka dots, ruffles at the shoulders and on the hem of her very, very short skirt. Her stockings were pink to match the polka dots and her hair, with pigtails that I was sure were supposed to be cute. I found her all and all, repulsive.

A love bot was certainly not going to stop me. I shouldered her aside. “He is expecting me,” I exclaimed as if I needed to make an excuse to this latest of Daniel’s indulgences.

Star Trader Update .021 and .022

021.01

I kept telling myself there was no reason to be reckless about this. I made it over the wall without incident. I was well hidden in a shadowed corner of the garden trying to time the guards making their rounds without the luxury of a watch. I tried to gauge how late it was and how much more darkness I had left.

 I am not patient by nature. I watched the pair of guards pass one more time, took a deep breath and made a crouching sprint for the trellis that climbed up the palace wall to the balcony where Muloot fell. I hoped to find Rand there, or at least be able to backtrack from there to his personal quarters where he hopefully slept like the dead, unguarded, and I could snatch my blaster and run like hell. I know, big stretch, but I was desperate.

I was a bit noisier then I hoped to be climbing the trellis, but luckily did not draw any attention from the guards. I made it to the balcony without incident. The room I was now familiar with was dimly lit and unoccupied. Now that I was here, I wondered if it was even conceivable I would be able to find Rand without running into a guard and getting myself recaptured. And, what would the future ruler of Alta III do with me when he found I didn’t return with his prospective bride in tow? You would think I would have thought this out before scaling the trellis, but as I said, I am a little impatient at times.