“CASTLE is hereby dissolved, all members are to be retired, all assets are to be liquidated. Captain Hancock, you have served with distinction, and will be offered the choice of Butterfly or Shannon as your retirement destination.”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you,” Captain Hancock glared at the hologram of his team’s handler.
“I’m serious. The boss was about ten seconds away from black-bagging everybody. You’re good at your job, Captain. Too good. That last miracle you pulled off? It scared the Director of intelligence.”
“Well, crud. I’ll take the Butterfly retirement. I’m afraid a few of my crew aren’t going to take the news so well. Frantz might even take up drinking. Thank’s for the warning.”
“I’m sorry you’re getting such a raw deal, John.”
Captain Hancock put one hand to his temple and sighed. “I suppose this is what we pulled all those miracle for, right? The chance for people to live a quiet life and die a quiet death.”
“Goodbye, John. Your pension will be waiting for you on Butterfly.”
Captain Hancock pulled the lever that severed communications with the handler and rose to his feet. Stepping out of his cabin, he tapped out a message on his com-band summoning his crew to the cargo bay.
The ship was parked inside a cavernous hangar once used to construct interplanetary passenger liners. It took only a few minutes for the two snipers to come down from their perches, and for the two mechanics to extricate themselves from their projects. Lucy, the crew’s pilot and mascot, had been at the Captain’s side in moments, having been doing homework in her bunk. The two medics had been quick to arrive as well.
“Alright boys and girls, here’s the sitch. Castle’s getting liquidated. I’m taking the Pension on Butterfly. I don’t care where you go, so long as you don’t let the ‘turds ice you, and you don’t put any of the team at risk. That said, I’ve come to trust each and every one of you. If you need a favor, ask. I might burn down whatever life you’ve built for yourself to pull you out, but I will answer the call.” That got a few chuckles.
“I’ve decided that our good ship ‘Wraith’ has been tragically lost, along with our stash of hard currency and the arsenal. Lucy, you’re the only true ghost in our team, so you get the ship. Brad, you divvy up the arsenal. Callie, split the money between whoever is going to fake their death and get out from under Intel’s surveillance.”
“Hey Cap, this reminds me of an action flick from back in the days of Bruce Willis.”
“Oh? You still watch that twenty-first century garbage?”
“They’re classics! Not garbage. Anyway, the movie was called “RED: Retired, Extremely Dangerous. Bunch of oldies getting together to take down a corrupt government official.”
“We are not going on a revenge kick, Blaster.” Captain Hancock fixed the man with a glare. “We were complimented on our work. I have no intention of any of you undermining that for petty vengeance.”
“Yes Sir!” Blaster saluted smartly.
“If you’re faking your death, do it in the next two months. I trust you not to get rusty in that time-frame, but afterword, I’ll be terribly upset for your funerals to interrupt my retirement.”
“Aye Aye, Captain!”
“Dismissed.”
#
Lucy watched the only family she’d known for the past fifteen years descend the ramp of the Wraith. Well, it wasn’t the Wraith anymore. She’d rechristened it the Spectros, just before bidding Captain Hancock goodbye. The Captain wasn’t blood related. Lucy didn’t actually know her blood relations. She’d been three when she’d wandered onto her father’s spaceship, and he’d been quick to foist her off on Captain Hancock. As a child, Captain Hancock had told her countless stories of her Father’s adventures as a Solar Ranger, always careful to keep the identities of those involved obscured. Lucy had aspired to be a Ranger too, when she was ten. The crew had taught her the ins and outs of interstellar jurisdiction and bureaucracy, to the point where she could forge just about any document a situation called for. They’d trained her to act out a number of cover identities, and how to use any weapon that came to hand, and her body if no other weapon was available. And Lucy had endured it all, up until she’d had to kill someone. Then she’d cried for a week and declared she didn’t want to be a ranger anymore. Lucy had been sixteen. For the next three years her training was just as rigorous as before, but no longer focused towards the goal of becoming a Solar Ranger. Instead, Lucy had let her focus drift, before catching on the art of tailoring. The crew had showcased an ability to portray vastly different characters with a simple change of wardrobe, and Lucy sought to reinvent herself with pattern and fabric.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
To that end, Lucy had selected a world where costume was a critical part of the culture, but not the primary arena of competition. Not the major hub of a sector, rather a farming world known for hosting skilled mechanics. Pinewood, it was called. Settled three generations ago by Mandalorian clans in the course of their exodus from earth.
The Mandalorians (Man-da-lore-ee-ans) were a curious combination of fanatic cult and reserved sceptic. They drew their origin from the same genetic pool of serial rebels that formed the formerly United states of America. During the mid-twenty-first century, as the autocracy of the district of Columbia and Silicon valley sought to solidify their power through control of communications and information, A Texan weapons manufacturer struck a deal with Mexican vigilantes to form a mercenary company called the Haat’ade. Disney and Hasbro immediately launched a lawsuit over the blatant ‘theft’ of Star Wars iconography. The Texan Weapons manufacturer, who had sampled a bit of the seized product the vigilantes had liberated from DEA redistributors, told them to “go kark themselves” and doubled down on fomenting a nascent rebellion. With the proliferation of armor, Texans invested in armor-piercing weaponry. This scared the autocrats, and their attempt to strip Texans of rights accelerated the rebellion. An enterprising young politician donned Mando-themed armor for their rallies, and then staged a fake assassination attempt on himself. A true attempt followed not three days later, which his armor helped him survive.
The Texan Senate, with the assistance of a few preachers and Rabbis, hammered out a Mandalorian code of honor to safeguard those who weren’t willing or able to don armor, and posted a standing bounty on violators of said code. The Imams attempted to influence the code, but were only given limited concessions. D.C. attempted to invade Texas, and subsequently lost all control of the country as it fractured into a dozen loose alliances. As globalists sought to extend their reach to other spheres by championing an interplanetary colonization effort, Mandalorians found themselves persecuted by their neighbors. In time-honored religious tradition, they chose to relocate elsewhere. In this instance, to other worlds.
Decades had passed before the conflict between Mandos and the rest of humanity had settled down to a light tension. Mandos had adopted a form of heraldry and standardized redundant ID systems that kept impersonation down below an acceptable level. In their own settlements, Mandos would sometimes forego their helmets, relying instead on tinted eye-wear to project their Heads-up-displays.
Lucy didn’t fly straight to Pinewood. First she made a few stops at various trading stations, building up her cover as a courier pilot that had received their ship from an unnamed wealthy benefactor. After arriving in Pinewood’s star system under stealth, Lucy patched into the local data network and gathered information while planting the beginnings of her cover identity. When all was in readiness, she plotted her landing trajectory to coincide with a local meteor shower, and selected a water retention basin upstream of a hydroelectric facility to serve as her landing site. Lucy forged enough coincidental instructions to keep her arrival from being recorded, and then coasted down amongst a number of shooting stars. Only one person was close enough to see the shadow of the Spectros, and they weren’t curious enough to make their way to the basin. If they had, they would have seen the Matte black form of the
Spectros sink beneath the surface, leaving ripples and raising the water level a fraction of a centimeter. Twenty minutes later, they would have seen a transparent bubble rise to the surface and disgorge a single-person hover-bike, equipped with wheels for reduced power-consumption. Just because one had the ability to fly between trees at more than a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour didn’t make it wise or efficient. With her vessel concealed, and a restriction against diving logged in the county legal code, Lucy made her way down the unpaved access road and out onto the marginally better county road that led towards town. Her hover-bike gave a smooth ride despite the bumpy terrain, but Lucy paid attention to her surroundings, wary of drawing unwelcome attention. Her goal was the local town, and the armorer’s shop there.