The Incredible Commerce Raider

Jane Somerset lounged on the dark blue, one-armed, velvet tufted settee in her private quarters on the commerce raider, MYRMIDON, reading the most dangerous book in the explored universe. Hardly the proper reading material for a beautiful young woman who possessed unimaginable wealth, but it was a book with which she had an intensely personal relationship. It was her father’s log as a commerce raider, a private pirate for hire, written and annotated in his own hand. In an age when books were digital or holographic, his was an anachronism -- handwritten in a script that practically no one alive knew how to read on real paper. People had killed for it and recently it had nearly brought down one of the seven mega-corporations that controlled practically all of explored space. Never one to apply herself at the various schools she had attended while growing up, she now diligently read each page of the log, line by line and word for word, absorbing the subtle nuances of her father’s tactics as he engaged armed freighters and Conglomerate and Transnational pursuit ships in his efforts to disrupt the corporations’ supply chains.

She had a hard time picturing the man who had carried her around and showered her with love and affection as one of the most dangerous and sought after pirates in skies of a thousand planets. But then, she had always known that he was somebody. The mine owners on Magnum-4 had always deferred to him. Wherever he went, his word was law. And it was more than just his wealth. Jane turned the page and re-read his almost dismissive comments on engaging a Directorate First Space Cavalry Corvette for the first time. He had been under strict orders from Lydia Thompson (Third Prime of the Directorate Maximus, for whom he secretly worked) not to destroy any Directorate ships so he toyed with his adversary until the corvette disengaged to regroup.

Jane smiled. She remembered how, when she was 10-years old, she had lost her temper and had begun swinging wildly at her father and how all he had done was place his large hand in the middle of her small forehead to hold her off while she fanned the air with her fists until she was too tired and too frustrated to go on. Then he dropped his hand and calmly asked, “Feel better?” He had treated the corvette in exactly the same manner. He had allowed it to take all the shots it wanted, none of which landed, until it had exhausted itself in its frustrated attack. Then he calmly left it alone and folded space into the safety of the unknown.

Jane shifted her weight on the settee. The long black sleeve of the antique silk kimono she was wearing with its white hibiscus pattern dangled over the corner of the log. She tossed the sleeve back and tucked her bare legs beneath the cool fabric. “I’ve been thinking about genetically changing the color of my hair,” she said nonchalantly to the tall figure sitting in the wooden ladder-back chair against the bulkhead to her right. “Black would be nice,” she added pulling a handful of her wavy, long, brown locks over her shoulder to examine the ends and brush them against her lips.

Matt Quincey looked down at his own black Guardian uniform and smiled. “It would, in deed, give you a distinctive look,” he said in his soothing baritone voice.

Jane smiled. She found it strangely reassuring having a man, a Guardian that even the Primes feared and respected, approve of her choice of hair color. “You know, I don’t see your name mentioned anywhere in this log. Did you ever accompany my father on any of his raids?” Jane asked.

“How old do you think I am?” Quincey asked with a smile.

“You’ve never told me,” Jane said. “But as long as I can remember it has always been you and father. Or rather father with you in whispering distance. I grew up thinking of the two of you as a unit. I mean, if I wasn’t holding his hand, I was holding yours.”

Quincey chuckled. “No. Your father’s raiding days were over long before either you were born or I was assigned to him. I’m barely seventeen years older than you are. In the scheme of things, what with Youth Treatments and all, we are practically the same age.”

“Why is it then that my earliest memories are of you and not him?” she asked turning to look at him.

“Probably because you and your mother did not live on Magnum-4 to start with. Your father was helping his co-conspirators develop their alternative identities while they set up the mining operation there. It was physically too dangerous for either of you to be around him. My first assignment under your father was to protect you and your mother until it was time to transport you to him. You were just too young to remember him first.”

“It’s strange that I never thought to ask him these questions while he was alive. I kind of took his presence for granted. I thought that he would always be there.” There was a quick catch in her breath.

“None of us will always be here,” Quincey said softly. “Despite the Youth Treatments, it’s only a matter of time.”

“Then, you’ve never had a Youth Treatment,” she said as more of a statement than a question.

“No I have not,” Quincey answered.

“Will you?”

“I don’t know,” Quincey answered. “I’m not a Purist as was your mother, or as is my wife, but... I guess none of us can answer that question until that time comes.”

“Father had at least one Youth Treatment,” Jane said matter of factly.

“Yes, but that was before he met your mother,” Quincey said. “And remember, it was all part of the great deception that he was orchestrating not just against one corporation, but against all of them.”

“It amazes me that he was so willing to risk everything on that Magnum-4 venture,” Jane said.

“Why should that amaze you?” Quincey asked shifting his position in the chair but keeping his center of balance in case he needed to spring into action. “Every time your father went on a mission either for Lydia or for himself, he was risking everything. Everybody on this ship was. Have you noticed that, even now, none of the crew wear pressure suits? That’s one nasty vacuum out there on the other side of that bulkhead.” He nodded with his chin towards the other side of the cabin.

“I have.”

“Did you ever think to ask why?”

“The occasion never presented itself.”

“It’s because they would rather die quickly in the vacuum of space than linger waiting for a rescue that may never come.”

Jane closed the log and clutched it to her breast. “There is so much about my father I didn’t know.”

“I don’t think you were supposed to,” Quincey said.

“But he sent me to Aldeberan-4...”

“That was different,” Quincey said. “That was something he owed Diana and had nothing to do with his Directorate concerns.”

“It does now.”

“Yes it does. But that was not his doing, nor yours. Someone leaked the presence of that log to the Directorate knowing full well that the First Prime would do practically anything to protect not only his position but that of the corporation as well.”

“Lydia Thompson?”

“That would be my guess. She wanted to manipulate the First and Second Primes into stripping her of much of her power and relegating her to the backwater of the frontier.”

“I would hardly call Emerson-5 a backwater.”

“It is if you are Earth-Prime oriented,” Quincey said.

“Has Lydia ever confided her plans to you?” Jane asked standing up and walking across the cabin to a screened-in changing area.

“No,” Quincey answered. “Much of what I surmise is based on observation and conversations I had back on Earth-Prime with Komerovski at Guardian headquarters after the log debacle.”

“Do you think the First Prime knows that he only possesses a copy of the log?” Jane asked taking off and methodically hanging up the kimono in its designated slot on the rack.

“No. If he did, he would have the whole of the First Space Cavalry hunting you down to get the original. Fortunately, when Mrs. Lehman made her navigator’s copy, she incorporated your father’s comments and he in turn double checked her entries so that his DNA is all over the log we gave the First Prime. Janos Kadar will never know he is only holding on to the Navigator’s copy and not the Captain’s original unless you tell him.”

“And why would I do that?” Jane asked looking at her choices in wardrobe.

“I don’t know. Maybe one day you will want to jerk his chain. Maybe one day it will be to your advantage for him to know. To make him feel less for having been outsmarted by a mere child.”

“I am hardly a child. I’ll be twenty on my next birthday,” Jane said reaching for the black tunic undergarment..

“You are in his frame of reference,” Quincey said. “Which is probably to your advantage, for the moment.”

“How so?” Jane asked.

“For the moment, you are the last person he would suspect should anything unusual happen.”

“What do you mean by ‘unusual’?” Jane asked.

“It’s no secret that Lydia is planning to tear this parsec of space out of the Directorate’s hands and form a new corporation, one centered in space and not on Earth Prime. To do that, she will probably need the support of one or more of the other corporations...”

“...Unless she plans to take some of their territory, too,” Jane said.

“That is a possibility,” Quincey said. “But Transnational is the only other corporation who has any territorial claims in this portion of the spiral arm. She could conceivably make some kind of deal with either the Conglomerate or the Antarctic Archipelago but I’m not sure that either of them would want to start an interplanetary war over territory so far from Earth Prime, itself.”

“Yes, but to do what you suggest, she would have to have some kind of bargaining chip,” Jane said. “And I just don’t see it.”

“Look in the mirror,” Quincey said.

“What?”

“You. Or rather this ship,” Quincey said.

“Do you think that she expects this ship to stand up to the full force of the First Space Cavalry and whatever forces that Transnational thinks to commit?”

“Lydia is very good a sacrificing pawns to win the king.”

“And this ship is a pawn?”

“Everything ‘not Lydia’ is a pawn,” Quincey said. “Just remember that.”

“I thought you were her friend,” Jane said.

“I am. I may be her friend. But I’m your Guardian. You are my priority. You have been practically since the day you were born.”

Jane emerged from behind the changing screen. She was dressed in black from her black satin choker down to her black thigh high leather boots. Her black corset was laced tightly across her stomach, forcing her breasts up and out, filling the fabric of the off the shoulder black tunic. Her black skirt was slit up the side allowing for a full stride and revealing just the hint of olive colored flesh between the top of the boot the black lace undergarment beneath. And she was wearing full length black lace gloves that covered her arms from the tunic to her finger tips. A black belt hugged her hips beneath the corset at an angle as if it were meant to carry a weapon.

“Shall we go,” she said.

Quincey stood and walked to the door. He opened it and stepped into the corridor. Having established that it was safe, he held the door for her and allowed her to precede him down the hallway. It was a private corridor. There were no other doors opening on it except the one to which they were heading. When they reached that door, Quincey stopped and waited for Jane to compose herself. When she was ready, she gave him the signal. Quincey snapped the door open and in his best baritone voice announced, “Captain on the bridge!”

On the other side of the door, in the control room of the MYRMIDON, everyone snapped to attention. Jane walked across the control room to the captain’s chair and arranging her skirt to allow her legs to cross, she sat down and said, “Report by station.”