Issue 13 - Ray Gun Revival

The Price of Conquest, by Mik Wilkens Pg. 0
“It’s all right, Bryant. We won’t hurt you.” He
knelt before her and looked up into her face. “I
won’t hurt you.” He glanced behind the chair.
“Untie her, Trin.”
#
Kressa awoke expecting to hear the thrum of
the Conquest’s systems and feel the skin-tickling
sensation of the transdrive field. She’d had a
terrible nightmare about guns, Patrolmen, and
a mysterious colonel, and needed the reassuring
sounds and sensations. But they weren’t there.
“Connie...?” She opened her eyes.
It wasn’t a nightmare after all.
She lay in the hotel bed, the colonel seated in
a chair beside her.
He smiled as her eyes met his. “Good morning.
How are you feeling?”
She studied him for a long moment before
concluding that not even the Patrol would resort
to a charade this elaborate to get information
from her.
“Alive,” she answered finally. A dull ache filled
her body and limbs, but no other evidence of her
ordeal remained. “Maybe even better than that.”
“Calin may be young,” the colonel said, “but
he’s a hell of a medic. I’ll thank him for you.”
Kressa gave him a weak smile. “Why do your
men call you Colonel? Are you in some kind of
army?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, some kind.”
She continued to watch him, determined to
get more of an answer.
“We’re with the Guard,” he said.
“Those guns the Pattys found on the Conquest
were for you?”
“They were. Cameron ran a lot of things like
that for us. He was good at it.”
“Not good enough.”
He frowned. “Someone sold him out.”
“How did you know him?”
“Our fathers did business together when we
were boys. They brought us with them whenever
they had a meeting. I suppose they hoped we’d
absorb some of their business sense, but we were
always too busy getting into trouble.” He gave a
reminiscent smile. “I lost touch with Cam after
my father and I had a—falling out. Then one day
Cam showed up with this crazy old guy and his
ship. Said he’d learned enough about business to
realize the only kind he wanted to be in was free
trade. Not that I think he and Juric did a hell of
a lot of trading. They were having too much fun
traveling around, spreading Juric’s treasonous
message.”
“What do you mean by treasonous?”
The colonel smiled. “Oh, Juric had these
wonderful, wild ideas about a free galaxy. He
came from a long line of highly successful businessmen,
but he didn’t like the way the profits
went to only a small percentage of the people. He
wasn’t exactly a revolutionary—he didn’t travel
around fomenting rebellions or anything like that.
He just happened to have different ideas than the
establishment, and the money to get those ideas
listened to.”
Kressa recalled what Connie had told her
about Azano’s death. “It cost him his life, didn’t
it?”
The colonel’s brow creased. “What do you
mean?”
“He was killed during the Patrol attack on
Arkana. They wouldn’t have attacked if Arkana
hadn’t been backing the Free Worlds. Don’t you
think Azano’s words had something to do with
Ray Gun Revival magazine Issue 13, January 01, 2007