(Private Room, Raven’s Roost Bar, Black Star Station, Dimiya
System)
“So, like I said, I can get you three crates of the BFG-2000s,
and two full containers of the XM-27s. The BFGs are psy-weapons, so no need to
haul around ammo or batteries, as long as your people have enough brain power
to keep it up, but the XMs use ballistic rounds. I can get you another
container full of ammunition for them, easy. And you can fit a LOT of ammo in
one of those containers.”
Genda Thadik, Second of his Name, Gunda of the North, Dol
Signed, Heir to the True King of Sandar grit his teeth as he looked at the knelfi
‘merchant’ sitting across the table from him. As a true son of the Dendrak
people, from the God-World Dendra, he should not even be speaking with this unclean
filth. By rights, he should take up his traditional axe and bury it in the
knelfi’s face as the proper start to cleansing God’s creation of their filth.
He held his tongue, however. Nothing good ever came from dealing
with the unclean offworlders, but he was desperate. And the merchant had what
he needed. That many weapons would go a long way towards helping them in their
fight against the Confederate invaders that had held his people down for too
long.
He nodded once, and said, “That is acceptable. What of the rest
of the things I asked for?”
Ryul Yelro smiled winningly, though it had little effect on
the Dendrak. Or did it? It was always hard to tell with their bodies which
seemed to be made of stone. At any rate, if he nailed down this contract, then
it could be the start of big business for him, so long as he could keep the
weapons flowing.
“Well, some of them are easier than others, you understand. Let’s
start with melee. You have a wide selection there, but I would recommend ones
that take advantage of your natural strength and mass. Energy sabers are great
for the light, quick types, since they can cut steel like butter, but they lack
the mass of a solid blade, which means someone’s raw strength is effectively
useless with them. Now, you might want to keep a couple around, since they are
easy to conceal, if you know what you’re doing, but, for your people, it would
be more of an assassin’s weapon than a freedom fighter’s weapon.
“Fortunately, you got options when it comes to weapons that
take advantage of your power. Obviously, the megafist is the simplest of them,
just being a gauntlet that you wear over your normal hand, which provides
enhanced weight to your blows, with enhancements to your natural strength. Then
you have your lightning hammer, which is a two-handed hammer that can shock
foes in addition to beating them, damaging flesh and disrupting electronics.
The power sword and power claws are variations of the same technology, using a light
electric field to turn the blades into a monofilament edge, and increasing
their durability, making them capable of slicing almost as well as an energy
saber.
“But my personal favorite, especially if you’re trying to drive
home the point that people should think twice before crossing you, would be the
chain weapons. Basically, some damned fool human took a tool for cutting down
trees, and thought, ‘Hey, it would be great if I could hit someone in the face
with this!’ Obviously, the materials and engineering are much more advanced
than the original item, but they are brutally effective against body armor and
flesh. They come in three main forms, swords, axes, and fist weapons.”
Genda considered that for a moment. What the merchant said
made sense. And he had seen video of weapons like what the merchant described
in action before. They would be very effective in the hands of his warriors. Of
course, every warrior had their own preferences, when it came to weapons.
“I see. Would it be possible to get a selection of weapons,
so my warriors can find ones that suit their training? They will already have
to learn the new firearms, after all.”
“Sure, sure. You wanted weapons for five hundred, with the
possibility to expand to a thousand in short order, right? Then how about one
hundred megafists, one hundred lightning hammers, two hundred sets of power
claws, two hundred power swords, fifty chainfists, fifty chainaxes, and three
hundred chainswords? I’ll even throw in five of the energy sabers for ‘special occasions’,
since you’re buying in bulk.”
Genda nodded. “Acceptable. And what of the rest?”
Ryul grinned. “Done with the main course, on to dessert,
yeah? All right, then. Let’s talk explosives.”
(Safehouse, Black Star Station, Dimiya System)
Amra Lorasys just shook her head at what she was hearing. Rebels
and separatist groups were simply a fact of life when you were dealing with a
single planet, much less an interstellar polity. Well, once you got past a
certain population level, at least. New colonies, like Star’s Reach, simply
hadn’t had time to develop them, yet.
In the Confederation, most of the worlds had been settled
for a very long time. They’d had plenty of time to develop their own cultures,
and, with them, their own rebels. Honestly, it would be more surprising if there
weren’t any rebels in the Confederation.
At last count, across the two hundred and eighty-seven
systems that made up the Confederation, there were five hundred and ten
different rebel organizations, separatist fronts, or religious crusades in
operation. Roughly four hundred of them were mostly peaceful groups, that were
working to try and change things from inside the system. Another fifty were
proponents of revolutionary change, but were too small in scope to do more than
a local impact.
The rest? Well, they were the problems that kept the Confederate
Intelligence Service’s domestic wing busy. Thankfully, most were too self-destructive,
either in their ideology or their methods, to have a long-term impact, though
that didn’t downplay the damage that they could cause in the short term. Some,
however, were far more problematic.
The Fist of God was one of those far more problematic
groups. The Dendrak were a race of lithomorphs, their bodies composed primarily
of a form of granite, giving them incredible strength and durability. They also
moved surprisingly fast, when they wanted to, making them incredibly dangerous
combatants, even without technology.
The Dendrak lived on the world of Sandar, a volcanic world
rich in mineral and metal wealth. The world was utterly inhospitable to any
more normal form of life, giving the Dendrak a lack of natural predators or
rivals save the great fire worms. This lack of competition stunted their technological
progress in roughly the iron age.
Before the Confederation found them, just over four hundred
years ago, they remained in this iron age society, ruled over by an absolute
theocratic monarchy. The True King of Sandar was also the High Priest of the
God-world that they walked upon. Or something like that. The description in the
briefing pack she was given before the start of this mission went into some
combination of alien philosophy, history, and religion that she neither knew
nor cared about.
The Sandar system, being only thirty light-years from
Dimiya, was one of the first systems annexed by the Confederation as it began
growing. In those early days there hadn’t been any rules against simply taking
a pre-FTL species’ homeworld and turning the species into a servant race. Those
rules had been written largely because of Dendrak, and the Sandar Revolt.
The True King and his people did not take kindly to their
annexation, once it was described to them, and fought back. They fought back
surprisingly well, considering that they were using iron age technology against
a civilization that controlled the high orbitals. As the Confederate Navy soon
discovered, orbital strikes are of limited use against creatures that can ‘swim’
through stone.
The Sandar Revolt took ten years to put down. Ever since,
the descendants of the True King and their faithful had been making trouble,
off and on, trying to regain control of their planet, by any means necessary.
Over the centuries, their numbers had been whittled down through attrition,
until only about eighty thousand Dendrak remained in the current day. And still
they fought.
The Fist of God was merely the most recent group to follow
the True King in their quest to take on the Confederation. Their limited
numbers and primitive weaponry kept them from being a true threat, of course. But
that, it seemed, was about to change.
When the CIS got word that Genda Thadik, leader of the Fist
of God, had actually travelled off of Sandar, something that no member of the
Fist or its previous incarnations had ever done, as far as the intelligence
agency knew, eyebrows were raised. When he booked passage on a freighter headed
to Dimiya, the CIS took notice. When the freighter’s destination was listed as
the Black Star Station, people got worried.
The station itself wasn’t the problem, of course. It wasn’t
even the station’s owner, or the company he ran, if Amra was honest with
herself. No, the problem was that the station was run as a ‘grey market’ port,
where grey could move to black in an instant.
The criminal element loved it, of course, despite the hefty ‘protection’
fees Black Star charged the syndicates. A safe harbor and neutral ground, not
run by the Dimiya Trade Authority, was worth the fees. Of course, the protection
itself was worth every credit. The last group to try and cause trouble on the
station had found themselves on the outside of the station without a suit, and
then Black Star’s lawyers went to work on their families with a ruthlessness that
was usually the province of Confederate Internal Revenue Service agents.
Needless to say, the hottest syndicate war became ice cold
on Black Star’s station.
The CIS tolerated a certain level of criminal activity, of
course. Trying to wipe out the criminal element was as futile a task as trying
to wipe out all rebels. And managing the level of activity wasn’t CIS’s department,
thankfully.
Even the arms dealer, Yelro, was not a major concern for the
CIS. Their kind were useful enough, so long as they didn’t trade in things like
nukes, or other truly nasty weapons. Being able to get weapons of questionable provenance
was always a useful thing for CIS agents.
Thankfully, Yelro was one of the ‘known’ arms dealers. He
mostly worked with mercenary groups and syndicates, but sold to pirates and rebels
as well. That meant he knew where the limits were. If he was going to sell any
of the really nasty stuff, he wouldn’t do it in any way that it could be traced
back to him, and he certainly wouldn’t do it from here.
But that didn’t mean she could just ignore that the Fist of
God was looking to gain modern weaponry. And not just small numbers. With the
amount of weapons they were looking to buy, that meant—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Wait. Who was knocking? She hadn’t ordered anything, and
wasn’t expecting anyone. With a mental command, she sent a command to her
electronics, switching them to their ‘civilian’ displays. Checking once more to
make sure there was no visible sign that she was anything other than the
traveler she was supposed to be, she took a breath, and went to the door.
She was about to reach her hand to the intercom to see who
was at the door, when the door opened of its own accord. She knew she had
locked that door! Amra was surprised, but training kicked in, as her hand moved
to the pistol on her hip.
“That would be incredibly unwise, Agent.”
She her brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing. A lone
knelfi man, dressed in the Black Star Corporate Security uniform, a badge on his
chest. He had a pistol, like hers, but she noticed that his was already in
hand, and pointed directly at her chest.
She slowly pulled her hand away from her pistol. “So, to
what do I owe this ‘pleasure’? And do you have a name?”
“I have several. But any that I’d tell you would be as meaningless
as the fake name you used to sign for this hotel room. As for why I am here,
that is simple. You were spying on one of the residents of the station.”
“Wait, are you trying to say that the arms dealer is
connected to Black Star? Is that why you’re protecting the deal?”
“Oh, nice try, but that isn’t it at all. You see, Mr. Thadik
paid for the private room, with the discrete staff option. He neglected to pay
for the privacy screening measures, or he simply did not know about them.
Either way, that is why your bug was allowed to remain in the room.
“However, this brings us to the matter of the fees you owe.
First, there is the privacy violation fee, with a penalty for forgetting to
purchase it before you began spying on customers on Black Star Station. Second,
you have the optional discretion fee, where we don’t inform the parties you
were spying on that you were spying on them. And third, you have the optional
fee to skip the mandatory thirty day ‘cooling off’ period before you will be
allowed to report your information to your superiors. All told, your bill, with
the optional extras, comes to 254,340 credits.”
“And if I refuse to pay this blackmail?”
“You will be shot for violating station rules, and ejected from
the station towards Dimiya’s surface. Your fees will then be presented to the
CIS, with an added 1000% processing fee, and a public statement will be made
about CIS spying on private citizens on corporate property, while exposing your
name, and as many names and cover identities of your superiors and fellow agents
as we can uncover. All pitched as concern for the rights of common citizens of
the Confederation.”
Amra grit her teeth. The smug bastard had her over a barrel,
and at gunpoint, and he knew it. “I don’t have access to those kinds of
discretionary funds.”
“That’s fine. Our security experts have arranged for the
comm set on the table that came with your room can temporarily serve as a
secure line, so you can talk to your superior. Your actual superior, not the
cut out you report to. The number is pre-dialed and waiting for you to initiate
the call.”
Amra tried to keep from hanging her head in defeat. There
wasn’t going to be any way of getting out of this clean, it seemed. As she reached
for the phone, she said, “So, what tipped you?”
The nameless security officer chuckled. “That’s need to
know, and you don’t. Now, make your call, or we start moving into the other
options.”
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