Highway Blues

On a dark desert highway,
Cool wind in my hair…

     The buzzer glided smoothly across the road, doing a cool 420km/h. The instructions manual and all the driving teachers had always said that manual control at those speeds were crazy, but it was easy for me. I was an ex-fighter pilot in our planet’s Space Corps, and with the reflexes needed for dogfighting in space, driving a simple road vehicle is a breeze.
I stared into the magnificent amber sunset and felt the fresh wind on my face. The feeling sent shivers down my spine. The air in the desert regions was so clean compared to the polluted city air. Our planet had never bothered to universally switch to something cleaner, like fusion, with a lacklustre government
subsidy program for users of green power and fuel. My ride was fusion based simply because I didn’t want it to blow up in my face.

On regular days, I would just drive around the endless desert highways enjoying the isolation and freedom, but tonight I had a destination; the spaceport. Virtually nobody lived in the outback so amenities are sometimes hard to find, but my hefty veterans’ pension coupled with a few bonuses here and there meant that I received a big package of supplies once a month and of course I had an endless library of literature to entertain myself with. The digitisation of all written works so everyone could access them was possibly the greatest decision ever made by the planetary government.

I had everything I wanted in the world, endless freedom and sustenance, but they made me discover something else I wanted. When I first signed up for military life a long time ago, I was nothing more than a young, naïve, brash and very green boy with a taste for adventure. There was nothing the girls liked more than the ultra-masculine, daredevil fighter pilot, and of course, I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed shoot-down. Like most kids who hadn’t experienced warfare, it was a big game to me. Not getting killed and scoring kills was the objective, and every time I came down, I’d just down beers with my wingmen and friends, and of course the weekly girlfriend.

I thought that spirit had died a long time ago, when the war wasn’t a game anymore. My insatiable lust for adventure quickly vanished as soon as I was defeated by the enemy. While I survived, it was like someone turning a light off inside of me. It didn’t feel like a game anymore, the feeling of danger that added to the excitement was suddenly omnipresent and everywhere.

When they arrived at my ranch one afternoon while I was lazing with a daiquiri, I was very surprised indeed. The two were dressed in what looked like a 1930’s Earth adventuring get-up and were on some sort of treasure hunt; they had obviously cracked into some government database somewhere to obtain their information. For one thing, my service record was almost completely classified for some reason or another, I can’t even think of my combat years according to the letter that they sent me (funnily enough it self-destructed when I finished with it), so the chances they just looked up my details were slim indeed. The more interesting part of the meeting was however about the treasure they were hunting.

The two wouldn’t delve into it with great detail, but did leave me a file with the rest of the information.
I decided to review the file one last time before I got to the spaceport. Pressing the button for automatic travel, I picked up my PDA and accessed the information. The treasure the adventurers were looking for was an ancient set of armour and weapons, left on some planet in a nearby star system, which name the adventurers did not disclose to me. The loot seemed valuable enough, I didn’t get a share, but they said if I agreed to go on this trip as the driver I’d receive a hefty paycheck. While the sum was substantial, it was something else entirely which made me so incredibly excited.

It was the adventure.

After the war, I was glad to have a simple life, I honestly thought the days of playing the game were gone, but the fact that they unearthed my combat record and the fact that they needed my combat record obviously meant one thing; danger.
The loot was no ordinary treasure either; they were relics of a Terragen civilisation who obviously were supremely technologically advanced, or wildly religious. According to the information from the government’s files, the weapons and armour were capable of amazing feats, or at least the civilisation that built them thought so. The details were a little fuzzy, going off on about stunning power but not actually giving any real insight into some of these alleged powers. On the outside to most observers it looked like any other wild goose chase, but I had a feeling something exciting might just happen on my little adventure.

The buzzer pulled into the space port’s parking lot smoothly. The only other vehicles there was a collection of, unusually, military-grade (or a civilian watering down of it) trucks with the markings of a cheesecake delivery company. Usually foodstuff companies drove around smallish minivans; the fact that they even had this many heavy cargo trucks in their inventory was somewhat of a mystery. Maybe the adventurers liked cheesecake? I guess it was another mystery of this treasure hunt. I stepped out of my vehicle and grabbed my duffel bag and webbing from the boot. Lifting up my gear, I noticed a pouch had fallen off the webbing. Grabbing it and opening up out of curiosity, I was absolutely astonished to discover my old 1171 Executive. While the name makes it sound like some sort of fancy watch, it was actually a very reliable and trusty medium-calibre pistol. I was astonished because I didn’t remember packing it the other day.

I opened up my duffel bag and aside form the usual gear like a few items of clothing and survival equipment, there was a holster holding a submachine gun, lot of ammunition and even a large hunting knife. I shook my head and closed the bag. I was so thrilled by the trip that I didn’t even remember packing the combat stuff. It must’ve gone to my head. Grabbing the stuff again, I walked into the spaceport. Weapons were allowed to be taken off-world and back using the smaller spaceports, visitors to our planet weren’t allowed to use small ones, required by the orbital patrols to land in a major spaceport as to avoid illegal imports of weapons.

The two that visited me before were here, dressed in the same outfit accompanied by a party of eight other people.
“Oh! You’re here!” One of the two visitors called out when I walked through the automatic door. The woman jogged up to me and grabbed my hand, shaking it enthusiastically. The rest of the party looked around at me. Six of the nine smiled at me, two women and four men. The other three were skulking in the corner of the lobby, fixing their gear to their bodies, a very hard looking woman and two equally ferocious looking men. I deduced that they were mercenaries of some description, judging from their camouflaged fatigues and military style webbing and packs. Or they could’ve been disgruntled adventurers who hadn’t had their alcohol and their equipment was just styled that way for practicality. Either way, the fact that I had even considered that they were mercenaries sent adrenaline surging into my veins. This was going to be interesting.
“Nice to meet your team, Miss Blancmange, I presume this trip will have some element of danger to it?” I asked.
She chuckled and waved her hand over to the three surly ones. “Don’t mind them. They’re just here to do their job, and earn their paychecks. We’ll be fine with them aboard.”

So they were mercenaries…I eyed their packs and imagined what sort of high-tech weaponry they were packing. While I had a submachine gun and a pistol, I surmised that they probably had high-powered customised assault rifles, and the trio were probably ex-military to boot.
I put my right hand into my jacket pocket. “Okay, when are we leaving, folks?”
The ten of them zipped up whatever they had in their hands. Blancmange looked at me and nodded her head towards the landing area to the back. “The ship should be fuelled up by now. The rest of the team are aboard already, and personally, I can’t wait to get off either.”
       
We all walked towards the ship, the Zelarix, a word meaning ‘Tidal Spirit’ in Zelarian, a language native to Planet Zeonia, a few hundred light-years away from our system. Zeonian vessels were renowned throughout the Terragen Sphere for their fine engineering and also for their unpredictability. This model was a three-month old medium-high tonnage freighter vessel, top of the line throughout the galaxy in its weight class.
“These guys must be stinking rich!” I muttered to myself. Miss Blancmange inquisitively cocked her head in my direction, looking me in the eyes.
“Sorry? Did you say something?” she asked.
I grinned, “Uh, no, she looks like a nice ride!”
Blancmange giggled. “I hope so, we went to great lengths to make sure this trip would be nice and productive!”
She actually meant nice and profitable.  
        
I climbed aboard first, and stunned to see a group of about thirty people of various professions, obviously archaeologists, geologists and other scientific types, one journalistic looking fellow and twelve other people clutching assault weaponry or loading caseless cartridges into magazines. It appeared that these mercenaries either couldn’t afford fancy energy or nanotechnology based firearms or simply preferred the grunt of conventional caseless ammunition. Either way, I was sure that they were deadly, but the sheer number of them did spark some worry in my mind, it appeared that we were off to fight in a minor civil war rather than hunt some long lost treasure. One thing was for sure, these guys were definitely stinking rich.

This was the passenger area; the seats were currently folded into the sides of the hull. Most of the passenger’s luggage was probably stowed in the holders running in the centre of the two rows of seats. It could be retracted into the cargo area to allow the passengers freedom to move about. The cockpit, executive lounge and secondary galley was to my left after entering the vessel, the benefactors of the excursion; Miss Blancmange and her friends would be sitting there.
“Well, should I prepare for takeoff?” I asked Miss Blancmange, who had just climbed aboard behind me. She walked over to the luggage holders and dumped all of her stuff into cubicle #24. Obviously the executive lounge catered for all her needs.
She smiled and said ‘yes’.

The pilots had a separate luggage holder in the cockpit which was ideal for me; I didn’t want to get my stuff, weapons and all, mixed up with anybody else’s. I appreciated the very high-tech styling of the Zeonian cockpit, an even balance of utility and user-friendliness. I didn’t care much for the user-friendly part, though. I hopped into the comfortable Captain’s chair and pressed the internal communications button on the comms panel. A hidden mike picked up my voice.
“This is your Captain speaking; I’d like to welcome you aboard this fine vessel and would graciously ask you to prepare for takeoff.” I spoke in my best impersonation of a professional commercial pilot’s voice. “I’m sure all of you have been assigned your seats and have stowed away your luggage in the centreline luggage holders, I’d like to ask all of you to fasten your seatbelts and remember, and this is a non-smoking, non-service, no-free food flight. Enjoy your flight.”

I was sure the academics and their companions were bustling to their seats and finishing up their chit-chat now. My hand reached for the control panel, until I realised that this was a Zeonian vessel. I was accustomed to the labour-intensive flying of lower-class vessels, and had only dreamed of being in the very exclusive cockpit of one of these beauties.
“Computer, prepare for take-off.” I spoke aloud. It responded with a series of beeps translating to yes, and the six secondary and four primary bow and aft-mounted engines roared to life. The throttle gauge was set at 20% for the taxi, which I wanted to do manually. I hadn’t flown for a while.
“Computer, manual override on take-off.”
“Manual control engaged.”

I used the manual thrust control stick to taxi towards the take-off pad, slowing increasing the throttle and adjusting the thrust so it pointed downwards. My left index finger held over the ‘ESCAPE THRUST’ button while I used my other hand to do an internal communication.
“Okay ladies and gentlemen, we will have lift-off in three…two…one.” I said as I pressed the button. An extra helping of fuel was forced into the engines as soon as the button was pressed, increasing their thrust almost a thousand fold. The speed which the vessel accelerated skywards was flabbergasting. Escape velocity on our planet was 11 kilometres per second, but I felt like I was travelling twice that speed. The passengers were not meant to feel it for their personal comfort but in the cockpit the speed was so much more real. Maybe it was because I hadn’t flown for so many years.
We were about 50 kilometres above the surface when I decided to set our course.
  
“Computer, set course to…” I stopped half sentence after realising that I didn’t actually know where we were going. I had been so caught up in the adventure I had missed out on practically all the details! What happened to my military conditioning? Since when was I like a child on a school trip? Any why did they need a pilot with years of combat experience flying fighter spacecraft to drive them around? I shook my head vigorously in a futile effort to clear it. All the situations before taking off should have set off alarm bells in my head. A treasure hunt, a very expensive and high-tech Zeonian vessel, a platoon of mercenaries with a lot of firepower and using a combat officer to do ferry work was very extraordinary. Pools of dread started pooling in the bottom of my stomach.
        
My head whipped around when I heard a series of screams from the passenger area. I quickly jumped out of my seat and grabbed my pistol from my bag and slammed open the cockpit door. I came face to face with three rifles pointed at my chest. I instinctively dropped my pistol and raised my hands. Even I knew when I was outgunned. Looking past the faces of the mercenaries holding the weapons, I saw a body lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his white shirt riddled with bullet wounds. From the clothes, it looked like it was the journalist. My eyes flicked over to the large panoramic window of the executive lounge and my heart skipped a beat. Not only were we now flying laterally across the surface of the world, I could make out a large fire where the spaceport was. Bombs, planted on board the trucks and in the terminal, no doubt.

“Captain, please get back to your seat and fly the fucking ship.” It was the voice of Miss Blancmange, now all business and holding a small hold-out pistol pointed at my face. “I’d like to get off the planet alive, same as you and all these other unfortunate passengers.” She waved the pistol to the Captain’s chair. “Move it.”

I turned with my hands still raised above my head and got back into the Captain’s chair, and using the thrust stick to send the Zelarix into orbit. Luckily I didn’t suffer from sweaty palms.
“Okay, Captain, fly us away from your little planet before we get asked any funny questions.”
I did what I was told, and aimed towards a random star. The ship did the rest. I gulped as I looked left to see the muzzle of Blancmange’s pistol inches from my face.
“I’m sure you’re looking for some answers, Captain?” Blancmange inquired. I hesitantly nodded. All of a sudden, the ‘hail’ tone sounded. Someone was attempting communication with the Zelarix.
“Shit!” Blancmange cursed. “Rodders, get into the gunner’s seat! And captain, full stop!” she commanded to one of her mercenary minions. The merc dashed from the executive lounge into the co-pilot’s seat, which she had amusingly referred to as the ‘gunner’s’ seat. Unless she knew something about this ship that I didn’t.

“Answer it, Captain, they’ll get suspicious if we don’t.” Blancmange hissed.
“Uh, last I checked my negotiating and lying skills weren’t really up to scratch…” I retorted. She pulled back on the slide of her pistol, and I pressed the reply hail button. Blancmange positioned herself where the hailer couldn’t see her, but where she still had the muzzle against my skull. She whispered, “One tap means yes, two taps mean no, got it?”
A monitor to my right flickered to life, and a young male face appeared, dressed in what I recognised as the Planetary Orbit Patrol uniform.
“Yes?” I said neutrally. “Can I help you officer?”
“Greetings Captain, sorry to bother you but we detected you taking off from Santing Spaceport in a very erratic manner. It appeared that your vessel suddenly started strafing through the sky at around 60 klicks, and not only that the spaceport you took off from suffered some sort of accident, according to my report here from Emergency Services. Didn’t you have auto-TO on, Captain?”
“Uh, no, officer, I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, I haven’t flown in a while, you see, and I must’ve gotten distracted while trying to achieve orbit.” I replied with only a trace of nervousness in my voice.

The officer looked unimpressed. I then realised how stupid that last statement sounded. Blancmange growled angrily into my ear, “Nice fucking going, jackass,” loud enough for only me to hear.

“Ah, huh, and you have a valid licence, I presume?” The officer asked flatly.
I felt a single tap on my back. If I had said no, then the officer probably would have called in reinforcements, and I could’ve possibly gotten out of this mess. Unfortunately, Blancmange wasn’t stupid.

“Of course, you can check it.” I told him as I gave out my details over the comm. The officer nodded after taking it down and said he’d be back. The monitor turned blue with the message ‘hailer busy’, flicking back to the face of the officer after about a minute.

“Okay, Captain, or should I say, Capitan, you don’t exist in our planet’s database. Nothing, there is not one entry on you at all. Your name was…” The officer was cut off by another officer behind him. She walked over and whispered in his ear before exiting the bridge. The officer communicating looked alarmed.

“Red alert!” He shouted out. “Captain, disable your power and prepare to be boarded, we have detected contraband aboard your vessel, for example multiple military buggies, a large stockpile of munitions and enough explosive to destroy an arcology. Pirates, eh? We’ll deal…” The officer was cut off again, but this time by something else. His vessel exploded with great force, shaking up the Zelarix somewhat. I noticed the ‘cargo bay door open’ light was blinking, which it ceased to do in a few seconds.
Rodders, the ‘gunner’ sniggered. “Bastards didn’t even know what hit ‘em.”
Blancmange came out from her hiding place and pointed the pistol in my face again.

“Let’s move Captain, get this crate rolling.”