Chapter 7
A woman’s loud swearing and the clanging of metal on metal filled the hold of the Mercenary Starship with a deafening noise. Rows of Armored Mechanical Mobile Combat Suits, or Mechs, stood in a line along the exterior walls of the spacious storage compartment.
It would have been an impressive display if most of the vehicles weren’t ancient and half intact. The Mechs were a chaotic mishmash of parts in various colours. There were components installed on frames that had been in use years before the Rebellion had occurred.
Parts manufactured and fitted based on designs made popular in the Unification War that unified the Empire under a single ruler, a conflict that happened thousands of years ago.
They were outdated, bulky and slow-moving compared to the latest Imperial models. But they packed a punch, could take a hit and worked under the worst planetary conditions. They could hold their own in a firefight anywhere in the galaxy with a bit of restoration ingenuity and scavenged parts.
One of the smallest Mechs, a Scout Class, stood at the end of the line, near the rear of the storage hold. A slim, vaguely humanoid, lightly armoured machine of 20 feet in height, it was designed for speed and agility.
A young woman knelt beside an open panel on its left leg, up to her waist inside the Mobile Suit. She was the source of the swearing as she banged on something inside the leg section with a wrench.
“Come on, you son of a bitch!” She cursed, slamming her wrench against a stuck hydraulic. It ricocheted off the side with a loud bang before striking her in the thumb. Pulling her body out of the compartment, she squeezed her thumb with her other hand, pacing as she waited for the pain to fade.
The young woman wore orange coveralls, with the sleeves and torso wrapped around her hips. She sported a grey tank top, covered liberally in dirt and black stains. The young woman would have been pretty, with pale skin and reddish-blond hair, if she had removed the grease smeared across her face that matched her coveralls, obscuring her cheeks and forehead.
With a loud huff, she pushed strands of hair away from her face with dirty hands before rounding on the Mech again.
“You hunk of crap!” She screamed, kicking the Scout Class Mech with her hard-toed boot. Punctuating her blows with more creative language, she was interrupted by a voice calling her from behind.
“Talha! Talha!” One of the crew members shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth to amplify his voice. He shrank back when the fiery woman rounded on him.
“What!” She screamed.
“The Captain wants to see you. Sounded urgent.” He replied, jerking a thumb towards the command section of the Starship before scurrying off. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Talha if it was bad news. The woman was a force of nature when she was in a fury.
Tossing her wrench onto the ground beside the open panel, she made her way to the front of the Ship, not bothering to clean up before meeting with the Captain. Along the way, most of the other crew members glanced at her quickly, judging her mood, before looking away.
Talha had become something of a figurehead to their Ship. They could read how the winds were blowing, like ancient sailors crossing the seas of Old Terra, by her mood. If she was irritable or angry, it meant business as usual. They knew something was terribly wrong if she was happy or smiling.
She assessed the Mechs as she walked, noting that they had less than a dozen fully operational. For a Mercenary crew, that was extremely light. The last few contracts were too low paying, and too high risk, to keep their fleet of Mechs in tip top shape.
Not enough money for replacements, too much damage to keep up with repairs. It was a situation without an easy fix unless something drastically changed their fortunes.
Work was drying up, and their reputation was falling fast. People in the know recognized the skill of their pilots and the exceptional abilities of their support staff to keep their Mechs running, but they needed better equipment. And to get that, they needed money.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Most of the best contracts involved long-term service to a noble, which the Captain refused to do. It meant a loss of freedom that she wasn’t willing to give up. So, they were stuck with short-term contracts, working for people who didn’t care if they lived or died. It was wearing, trying to eke out a living as a Mercenary.
Her naive excitement about seeing the galaxy had worn away pretty fast when faced with the drudgery and monotony of mercenary life.
Talha could feel her body lighten when she walked across certain small sections of the hold, the artificial gravity loosening its grip on her. A by-product of the Engine that powered their Starship, if the gravity was failing, it meant the Engine was on its last legs.
It desperately needed servicing, but it was the most expensive part of the Ship by a large margin. If they couldn’t keep the mechs running, they wouldn’t have a source of income, which meant no repairs for the Ship. But if they didn’t repair the Engine, they would be dead in the water.
She sighed, making a note to speak with the engineers about the ship repairs. Maybe they could rig something together. It was yet another thing to do on the endless list of Talha Sun, Third Seat of the Sun’s Marauders.
She left the storage hold and stepped over the raised bulkhead that separated the storage compartment from a short hallway. The entrances to the crew quarters, mess hall and recreation facilities were all located in this slight stretch of corridor.
Ignoring the side passages, Talha made her way to the end, where the Command Center was. A circular room with the Captain’s chair dominating the center, it faced a 360-degree wall of view screens. A navigation console, capable of directing the Starship to jump anywhere in the galaxy, stood against the left of the entranceway.
If the Engine was the heart of the Ship, then the Command Center was its brains.
Overall, it was a basic setup. Lacking weapons, shields, or advanced internal systems due to the demanding nature of the Engine, the Command Center only required a single person to operate. The Ship’s computer calculated the complex mathematical computations necessary to Jump safely by inputting the coordinates into the console.
The Command Center was currently empty, the view screens showing the space around them. In the distance, to her right, the local sun was a white speck, it's light faint this far from the center of the system. Directly ahead of where she entered, an asteroid loomed, with several smaller ships entering and leaving a shielded opening on its surface.
The Marauders had only arrived less than an hour ago. They had come here to trade, looking for parts for some of their Mechs, and to access the Imperial Net. What kind of trouble could the Captain have found already, Talha wondered.
Walking into the room, she moved past the Captain’s chair, entering a side passage on the left where a small meeting room doubled as the Captain’s quarters were situated. As she entered, the smell of pipe smoke hit Talha in the face, a nasty habit that several veteran crew members refused to give up.
She was immediately assaulted by the oppressive atmosphere once inside the room. A dozen people were sitting or standing around a table, with the Captain at one end. Next to her, Talha’s Grandfather, the Captain’s husband, was glowering, his thick arms folded across his broad chest.
The rest of those present were all senior members of the Ship. Each was a grizzled expert with centuries of experience in combat and more successful mercenary contracts than Talha could count. They were the original veterans who had formed the Marauders with Talha’s Grandparents, those few still alive and active, forgoing retirement to train and shepherd the newer generations.
“Talha, sit.” Her Grandmother, Tamara Sun, spoke while gesturing to an empty seat at the table.
Tamara, Captain of Sun’s Marauders, was a legend. Nearly 600 years old, she was still a formidable woman, despite her grey hair. She had led the Marauders for centuries. Through one conflict after another, thousands of contracts had seen their fortunes rise and fall.
Tamara was a complex and demanding person with nerves of steel and a face that Talha didn’t think had ever smiled once in her life. Her Grandfather, Elric, was a perfect match for Tamara. He was fiery emotion to her cold iron. A trait that he had passed onto Talha.
With short gray hair, pale skin from lack of sunlight and heavily scarred, Tamara was not beautiful. But she had a presence about her. Slender and less than five and a half feet tall, the Captain could fill the room, drawing all eyes to her. Best of all, in a Mech, she was unstoppable.
“What is it? I was trying to get the Scout up and running. I thought you told me it was my top priority.” Talha asked, looking around the room. It was grim, and no one was smiling or talking. Even on the most severe contracts, these men and women treated danger as irrelevant. What was going on?
A sliver of fear wormed its way into Talha’s stomach, an icy feeling that crawled slowly from her guts and into her veins. Her Grandmother looked at her husband for a moment, a silent conversation passing between them before the older woman turned back to Talha.
“We’ve received a communication. As Third Seat of the Marauders, I want your opinion.” Tamara said, her tone flat and emotionless. The screen behind her lit up, showing a man, handsome and elegant.
He was wearing simple clothing, a long grey sleeve shirt that had seen wear, the material thinning. Behind him, she could spot several buildings through a window and a city beyond. They were foreign to her eyes, someplace she didn’t recognize.
“Tamara Sun. My name is Kalen Caledon, and I’m requesting your assistance.”