Fixer

  Fixer (Book 1)

  Ryan Vermont

  Copyright © 2019 by Ryan Vermont

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Fixer 2: Chapter 1 Preview

  Ready for Book 2?

  Chapter One

  Drez and I spent the afternoon watching the mysterious Byzantium starship grow larger in the viewport of the small tug shuttle we’d chartered from the docks. We wore our exosuits, although the cabin was pressurized for Terran normal. I didn’t expect trouble, and it was just the two of us in in that cabin. No worries that some Wally would lose his cool and blow a hole through the hull with a projectile weapon. You were never supposed to take those things along on a mission outside of an atmosphere, but plenty of gat-boys had screwed up by smuggling one along and firing it at the wrong moment. One hole through the surface of a pressurized vessel tended to kill both the attackers and the attacked.

  Drez, I didn’t worry about.

  I’d known the big half-breed for a long time. Like me, he was a trained killer, not a born one. He had the blue skin of his father’s Morbashi blood and the subtle lines of his mother’s humanity. It didn’t matter much in the end if you pissed him off; Drez would put the chill on you just the same.

  “Looks like the ship they wanted us to boost,” Drez said, his blue tint a glow in the lights of the instrument panel. Something about the high silver content in the diet of his father’s people gave them the blue tone, or so I’d heard.

  “It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before,” I commented to him. “The call sign was accepted by the people on board it, so we can go ahead and dock. Shouldn’t be too hard to take it.”

  “Remember what the boss told us,” Drez added a second later. “We’re to take that ship by any means necessary. And he doesn’t want any alibi ghee’s left around who can identify us. Are we right on that, Fixer?”

  I winced at the use of my nickname. My parents named me Stefan, or so the Janissary Morbashi told me years after he’d bought me for the sultan’s army. My last name, Klaver, was from the Janissary unit that raised me. I’d kept it when I escaped years ago. It was the only thing I kept from that life, other than the scars on my arms and chest. The Elynese Sultanate fell hard after the Irunians kicked their ass in the last war.

  “Don’t you worry about me, Spinesnatcher,” I returned. “I know my job; you do yours. Korth and the family wanted us to do this job because they needed their best.” Drez had a cute moniker of his own, and I wasn’t afraid to use it either.

  We heard metal on metal as the shuttle docked to the Byzantium. I nodded at Drez, and we both walked back to the airlock. In seconds, we had our helmets on and ready. Drez carried his long knife in one hand. I had my short sword in mine. This should be over quick and easy, but you never could tell for sure.

  Boss Kornth was our padroni, or employer, back on Nyx Station. I didn’t know where his people came from, because there was only one boss of the local Cinzar crime family. Korth was a brute that stood five-five in height and sported curved horns on either side of his massive head. I don’t know how his people evolved on their home world, but the rumor involved carnivore mountain sheep.

  Drez shived the first officer with his knife the moment he opened the door. I watched as blood spurted through the hole in the uniform. Drez had ice cubes inside him, that was for sure.

  I took out the second before the man went for the sword slung from his belt. The damn fool thought he could get it out when I was less than a foot from him. I slit his throat, then said a brief prayer I knew for the man’s soul as he fell in a geyser of blood. I learned that prayer from Agha Hashem before I could read or write, and it served me well in battle.

  “Huh?" Drez spoke to me, as he wiped his knife on some fabric dangling from the hull. “What did you say?”

  “What I always say when I kill someone,” I snapped back. “May the Compassionate show you the way home.” I looked down at both men; they were in their 20s and in uniforms without markings. Who the hell were they, and how did they get mixed up in this mess? I shook my head.

  “Oh, that,” my companion responded. “I should’ve learned to recognize it by now. Come on; let’s move. We’ve got a schedule to meet.”

  I’d spoken the words in the same language I’d learned them. It was a language that few people used any more. The Irunian conquest of the Sultanate had been brutal. Not that it mattered to me any longer.

  “Command team is ahead,” Drez announced as we approached the location of the bridge, or master control room. “I don’t expect them to give us any trouble in a fight. Providing they’re on the other side of the door.”

  “They’re beyond that door,” I informed him. “Felt them five minutes ago.” My esper abilities had their limitations, but the gift served me well enough when needed. I’d picked up six more Terrans on the other side, all of whom were worried about issues I couldn’t identify.

  “They know we’re coming?” Drez asked. “At least they won’t be able to see who we are.”

  “They’re concerned about something,” I informed him. “I can’t tell what it is, but I don’t think it has to do with us. I get some weird signals on this ship. You got the pass to get us inside?”

  Drez held it up in his free hand. “Right here,” he confirmed through his helmet’s communicator. We still hadn’t taken our helmets off since entering the Byzantium.

  Blood was all over his suit. Mine too. The command team might not know who we were, but they’d know why we were there the moment they saw us. I expected a good fight from this group and planned to say the prayer for the whole bunch after we killed them.

  Who the hell built this ship? The thought went through my mind as we thudded down the passageway. The bulkheads didn’t resemble anything designed by the 27 known sentient beings in the galaxy. Granted, new intelligent lifeforms were contacted every few years, but whoever built this place used a technology unknown to me. The bulkheads appeared organic, almost as if they were grown from a nutrient vat. No one, I recalled, made starships this way.

  “Creepy place,” Drez announced as we came to the door. “Beats me why the boss wants it. Guess he has his reasons.” Drez inserted the key into a slot on the door in front of us and stepped back. He dropped the blade of his knife down as I moved an inch or two in front of him. I was supposed to oversee this mission, and I didn’t care for the way he was trying to take it over from me.

  We waited for the door to slide open. As far as the command team on the other side knew, all the door would allow inside was a delivery crew with the supplies they’d ordered last week. We’d routed their call signal over to our end of the docks at the Nyx Port Authority when it came through. A few gold pieces made a certain harbormaster look the other way when a different supply shuttle left the enormous trading post that was hollowed from an asteroid. The two men already dead had thought we were another bunch of hedgehoppers.

  I watched as Drez ran his tongue over the sharp teeth he kept filed down. Another thing he’d inherited from his
father’s people, who lived off a pure meat diet. Being a metice, or half-breed, made him an omnivore in the manner of his Terran mother. He cranked the blade of his knife to the right, ready to spring into action if someone tried to assault us the moment the door opened.

  I breathed easy and watched the door move out of the way. I knew there was a vestibule on the other side, so we wouldn’t be able to see our targets unless they were ready to charge.

  The hum of the door’s motor stopped, and it revealed a lit passage on the other side that ended a few yards beyond us. On the other side, light streamed in from the master control room. We could hear agitated voices. I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but it wasn’t us.

  “You ready?” Drez asked me. I could see his face inside the helmet at this range.

  “As always,” I returned. “Let’s do this!”

  We charged down the vestibule and ran into the room beyond it.

  We stopped the moment the both of us were through the doorway.

  The master control room was about 30 feet across and filled with panels mounted into the bulkheads. Some of the panels had chairs in front of them. Different lights blinked on and off to the rhythm of the ship’s function.

  On the other side of the room stood six Terrans, as I expected, in unmarked uniforms. Just like the two we’d killed the moment we entered the ship.

  The six men stopped whatever it was they were doing and turned in our direction. I could see knife holsters on their belts. I didn’t have to say anything to Drez. We’d run at them from opposite ends of the line and take the marks out one at a time until we met in the middle. Both of us had run this plan plenty of times in the past.

  But before we could move, the six men pulled out their knives and cut each other’s throats.

  It happened so fast that I knew it had to be part of their final plan. One minute, they stood there looking at us; the next, each man took out a knife and cut his companion down. It was neat and precise. If not for the blood all over the deck, I would’ve admired the brilliance of it.

  Drez and I looked at each other, then walked over to the bodies. All were of similar age, although two of the Terrans were different in color. Funny how the people from my homeworld made war on each other over differences in skin color and nose shape in the distant past. It all stopped the moment they migrated to the stars and learned there were beings out there that looked a lot different from the standard Terran type.

  “They’re all your people,” Drez mentioned to me. He walked around and looked at the bodies.

  “And that of yours,” I reminded his half-Terran side.

  “My mother’s people,” he snarled at me. “I never knew or cared to meet any.” He picked up a knife from one corpse and looked at it. Then he removed his helmet to get a closer look at what he held.

  I pulled off my helmet and sat it on the deck. No danger now that the target had eliminated itself.

  “You know me,” I reminded him.

  “Not by choice, Fixer,” he snapped back, the knife in front of his eyes. “Well, shit; this is a vibratronic blade. These things will cut through titanium. No wonder they all went down so quick.”

  “Then why didn’t it cut through the deck?” I asked him. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a good idea that we’d removed our helmets.

  “It was set to ’meat,’" Drez answered.

  I heard a gurgling sound and turned in the direction of a man on the far end of the dead line. My esper sense kicked it, which it often did when someone was on the point of death. I leaned over to him and picked up enough to learn he was the captain of this ship. I couldn’t get any more; the man was too close to the other side.

  “You’re an esper!” the man gasped in his last breath.

  Then he was dead. That much I could tell every time with my ability. No need to mind probe him further.

  I stood back up and surveyed the carnage in front of us. I’d seen this and worse plenty of times. But now, I didn’t know what to do.

  “You going to say that prayer again?” Drez quipped from where he stood. “You have a whole lot of bodies to bid farewell this time.”

  “I was taught to say that prayer only to men who died in battle,” I growled at him. “These guys all took a back-gate commute. They’re cowans, which means they have no honor. You don’t show respect to the dishonored.” I glared at him, in hopes Drez would get it.

  “Whatever, Fixer,” he sighed. “Whatever.”

  Drez tossed the knife onto one of the corpses. “Well, this is just a goddamn mess,” he swore. “I’d hoped we could take one alive and get him to fly us back to Nyx Station. The boss could deal with his useless ass afterward; it wouldn’t be our problem at that point. Shit, how are we going to navigate this thing? Look at these panels. Does anything seem familiar to you? I don’t recognize any of this writing; do you?” He stomped around the bridge, trying to figure out if anything here made sense.

  There was no way Korth would send us here to get his prize unless there was a way to take it home.

  “Seems obvious to me,” I replied after a few seconds. “There has to be someone else on this ship that we don’t know about. We search the place over until we find someone who knows how to take us where we want to go.”

  “Are you serious? This place is huge. We might not be able to search it all in one day! How are we going to find someone hiding in this stinking Babylon?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  Drez was quiet. “I knew you’d say that,” he grumbled. “Okay, let’s go see if you can fix this situation, Fixer.”

  We spent the next hour searching the upper level of the Byzantium over until we moved down to the next one.

  “Upper level” is a relative term in a starship where you can adjust the gravity to wherever it’s needed. Most ships that can make the jump between systems are built in a gravity well, then hauled to orbit for final assembly. Since they’re constructed under gravity, the shipbuilders tend to make them as if they were still under it. Which means the lowest deck is the one that was at the bottom, planetside.

  It never mattered much, but this was what the Janissary academy beat into me years ago. When you have a man in a white robe whack you with a stick for not being attentive, it leaves an impression.

  The basic design functions of the ship were like any other. What made it feel different was how those functions were executed: doorways that were much too low for a standard humanoid in some areas, excessively high in others. Some doorways were round, some rectangular. I had the impression the builders of the Byzantium were deliberately trying to fuck with us.

  So far, nothing, just empty rooms and bare shelves. No wonder the dead captain put in an order for supplies. There wasn’t a thing in here to eat, at least not that we’d been able to find.

  “What’s this?” Drez spoke as he looked down at the deck of the passageway. A round hatch was positioned in the middle of it.

  I walked over and looked at the circle in the deck. “Odd place to put a hatch,” I commented. “Maybe a cargo hold of some kind, although the location doesn’t make any sense. See if it opens the same way as the others.”

  Drez sighed and pushed his key into a slot on the side, as it was supposed to work for every lock on this ship. There was a familiar hum, and it opened. But this time, the hatch opened in the fashion of an ocular lens. In the center, the iris grew until the opening had encompassed the entire circle around it.

  “Nuts,” Drez spoke as he looked inside. “Who the hell names a ship Byzantium anyway? Is that a Terry name?” He leaned over and looked deep into the opening. It was suddenly illuminated by a series of recessed lights.

  “What the fucking fuck!” Drez yelled and jumped back. I walked over to see what started him.

  There were children in that hole. Twelve of them.

  They ranged in ages from six to eight. All of them were dirty and smelled bad. They blinked from the lights and huddled to the center of the room below us. I cou
ld see a food and water trough in the far side of the room, which wasn’t more than four feet high.

  “Holy Mother Tara save us,” I spoke in Elysian. Drez ignored me; he was used to my swears in a language he didn’t know. Besides, the image of those imprisoned children shook him up as well.

  He walked back to the hole and looked down. “What kind are they?” he asked. “Those kids don’t look Terran. At least, not much.”

  I recognized them the moment the light gave me a better look. One of the things I did learn while I was a Janissary was how to identify the known sentient beings of the galaxy. Almost all were humanoid, such as these children. Evolution favored the familiar carbon-based life form that evolved much the same everywhere. However, the result could vary depending on your point of origin.

  Such as these children.

  “They’re Angelika,” I told Drez.

  “Oh," he responded, a bit relieved. “I was afraid they were some kind of breeding experiment. I know the last time someone tried to make a new thinking species, the entire planet was blown apart. Wouldn’t want to be involved if that was the case.”

  “Almost as bad. You don’t see many Angelika because on most planets, it’s a hanging offense to harm one of them.”

  As Drez began to swear about what the situation meant for us, I thought about what I knew about this astral race of creatures. They resembled the standard humanoid type but were a lot smaller in stature. Most of them were fair in color and had snow-white eyes. When first encountered, they were assumed to be albino. And then, it was discovered they had pigmentation in their skin, but not one that showed much presence in visible light. They were a peaceful people and were never involved in war. They served as negotiators in the many interplanetary conflicts that flared up now and again. To kill one was considered a mortal sin by every major religion in the galaxy.