2953-03-19 – Tales from the Inbox: The Treasure Hunter’s Prize 

While it is not particularly common, mercenaries are in the business of fighting other mercenaries when their employers’ interests come into conflict and the situation does not permit one company to buy out the other’s contract. Normally these fights are not to the last man – one company or the other will decide the losses aren’t worth it and capitulate – but on particularly high-paying missions, the amount of death and destruction required to make mercenaries give up the fight can be extremely large. 

I have heard it told that many mercenaries fear fights with other mercenaries more than they fear any other sort of combat; pirates, knowing their fate if captured, will regularly fight to the death if they can’t flee, but hired guns spend all their free time thinking up tactics and tools to maximize the death they deal out at minimal cost to themselves. 

Derrick Kaluza drummed his fingers on the wardroom table, his eyes darting between the holo-display suspended from the overheads, his wristcuff display, and Judith Stirling, seated on her own halfway down the table.  

The other three people present, all Kaluza’s subordinates, did their best to avoid notice; they kept themselves busy on their slates, only occasionally glancing up. Judith hadn’t learned the names of two of them; other than Kaluza himself, the only person aboard Gretchen Tarah whose name she knew after two weeks aboard was the captain’s. Raiko Wallace, though new to Kaluza’s service, was a cool, confidence-inspiring man whose unflappable nature contrasted well with his boss’s excitability. He sat at the opposite end of the table from Kaluza, calmly watching symbols creep across the display. 

The planet depicted by a mottled orb at one side of the plot had no name, just like its stellar primary; it was an arid, barely habitable sphere with sparse native life which had been quite reasonably passed over for colonization. Despite the remoteness and insignificance of the place, Kaluza’s intelligence division had somehow gotten the impression that something valuable was to be found on the surface. That something was apparently worth hiring a mid-sized mercenary company to guard, if it was there at all. Judith had her doubts, but her company had worked with Kaluza in the past. He might be erratic, but he wasn’t often wrong. 

As the blocky symbol representing the mercenary carrier Sigismund approached the nameless planet, a handful of tiny symbols detached themselves from it. These were Zakharov Outworld’s light strike squadron departing on a probing fly-over of the target area prior to planetfall. Sigismund itself couldn’t land, of course; a trio of lumbering dropships would deploy the infantry, armored troopers, and support vehicles that made up the bulk of the company’s strength. 

Kaluza, almost quivering with anticipation, cleared his throat. “How soon will we know if it’s there?” 

Judith shook her head. “Can’t say. You gave us a location, but not much to look for. If your treasure was obvious from orbit, though, Survey would have caught it.” 

Kaluza scowled. “One would think.” He glanced back down at his wristcuff. “That’s why I hired your people.” 

Judith offered no answer; Zakharov forces would know in the next three or four minutes if they were the first ones to stake a claim on the treasure or not. Signals traffic would communicate that back to Tarah two or three minutes later. 

“You know it hardly matters now whether you tell us what we’re looking for.” Judith tried to sound uninterested. She was of course extremely interested in knowing the prize that a treasure-hunter like Kaluza was so interested in, but it hardly mattered whether he said anything; one way or the other, she was going to find out what it was in short order. 

“You know where.” Kaluza shrugged. “That’s all you need.” 

“No sense with the theatrics, Derrick.” Captain Wallace chuckled dryly. “There’s no HyperComm here. Let your mercs know what they’re looking for. It’ll help them find it.” 

Kaluza glared at his subordinate across the wardroom for several seconds. “I suppose.” He took in a long, deep breath. “There’s a ship there, mostly buried in the sand. A damned big one.” 

“A ship? You think someone tried to settle this place?” Kaluza’s education was in archaeology, so this tracked reasonably well. A big find of a lost colony expedition, well preserved, would make him rich and famous at the same time. The old style pre-2600 colony ships, especially the ones fitted out for going way out beyond the frontier, were often designed for one-way trips and safe landings, at the cost of never being able to take off again. It wasn’t unheard of for the colonists aboard these expeditions to find themselves trapped in a failing colony; that was, after all, the basis for the popular Frontier legend of the Silent Planet. 

“A non-human ship.” Kaluza didn’t seem to know whether to be pleased with himself, or annoyed with the need to explain himself. “It doesn’t match anything in the normal database, but I had some friends look at it, and they think it might be a Grand Journey ship. A really old one.” 

Judith’s eyebrows shot up. “In the Orion arm? Really?” Most every spacer had heard of the enigmatic Sagittarius xeno-polity Grand Journey, and a few had even seen the steady stream of Gilhedat diplomats who represented it passing through Maribel on their way to the Core and Confederated centers of government. The commonly-told story was that at least three species of sapient  composed the population of the Grand Journey, with each operating a different set of roles within society. Where their worlds were remained anyone’s guess; there were even stories that the polity was, like the Reachers, fully nomadic. 

“The images I could get from my source were limited. But there was no doubt it was alien. Whatever its source, it’s a find worth having.” 

Judith nodded, already tapping away a quick message to be dispatched ahead to Sigismund. “And a find worth killing to protect.” 

Kaluza nodded grimly. “That’s where you come in. If anyone’s got here before us, that will be too bad. For them.” 

Judith knew better than to add the obvious conclusion to this logic: that if those people had brought mercenaries, too, it might equally be too bad for Zakharov.