Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact (4 page)

"Zack...," Alberts did his best to look sympathetic, "...your uncle was all but broke."

"I'm a little confused," said Zack, who was also mildly perturbed, "You mean I had to come all the way out here just so you could tell me Marv was broke? Why are we even bothering?"

"Because we do need your personal authorization to release funds from several bank accounts to satisfy these debts. That and there are some...other matters."

Zack had never expected to be a rich man and the short-lived notion that his uncle was leaving him a fortune had seemed a little too good to be true, so his disappointment was not as hard to swallow as it might have been, "Tell me what to do and I'll sign the forms."

The two of them spent the next two and a half hours going over Uncle Marvin's accounts. Alberts explained the details of each of Marv's assets and then went over the almost equal amounts of liabilities he had accrued. Thus occupied, noon came surprisingly quickly for both men.

Satisfied that everything was aboveboard, Zack signed the electronic pad that Alberts offered to him after applying his thumbprint to some twelve different accounts. He was shocked to discover that out of several million credits, his inheritance would amount to less than two thousand credits, about two weeks-worth of the pay he'd been receiving since he'd been in the Marine Corps.

Somewhat fatigued by all of the mental effort and totally disheartened by the final numbers, Zack prepared to leave. "Thank you, Mr. Alberts, I guess..."

"Hang on, Zack, there are a couple more things."

"And they are?"

"I've been saving the best for last. You see, your uncle also had a spaceship..."

Chapter 4.
Uncle Marv's Spaceship.

Freeport, capital city of the Haven colony, July 4, 2676.

"My uncle had a spaceship?"

"Yes, he did, the '
Capri
' he called her."

"How in space..."

"Actually, I believe the ship was originally part of his wife's estate. Some of the debt we just settled up on was accumulated on several recent bills for remodeling and updating that old ship."

"Where is it?"

"As far as I know, it's in a berth up on the orbital station. Let me see..." Alberts consulted another file on his tablet, "...it looks like the docking fees are paid up until the end of the month. You have two or three weeks to move it, sell it or pay another round of docking fees."

"How much are the fees?"

Alberts gave him a figure that was not outrageous but way beyond anything Zack could hope to sustain for very long.

"I don't think I can afford that," said Zack.

"Well, I do have a contact here locally who is interested in purchasing the old girl."

"I'd like to talk to him, I guess."

"Very good, I've sent the information to your tablet."

"You said a couple more things, Mr. Alberts?"

"Yes, I did, Zack." The lawyer fished around in the top drawer of his desk before handing Zack an old-fashioned metal key. "This key is for a safety deposit box at the Haven Colonial Bank. I assume you'll find the title for the
Capri
in it but I have no idea what else it might contain."

Zack numbly accepted the key.

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Zack. I knew your uncle pretty well. He was a real character."

As Zack was about to leave, the old lawyer got very serious for a moment, "Watch yourself, Zack," he said, "The circumstances surrounding Marv's death are more than a little suspicious. The authorities are still looking into it. I don't know what to make of it, but it wouldn't hurt to be a little more careful while you're here on Haven."

"Thank you, sir, I'll keep that in mind," said Zack. He slipped the key into his backpack and shook hands with the old lawyer before leaving the office. Alberts closed the door behind him.

Back out on the street, Zack performed a quick consultation on his tablet before walking several blocks to the main offices of the Haven Colonial Bank. After a brief interaction with one of the tellers and a short wait while she rounded up one of the assistant managers, Zack was ushered into the vault. The assistant manager, a well-dressed, immaculately groomed and somewhat haughty young man, waved a security key chip in front of the appropriate safety deposit box and motioned to Zack that he could now use his key.

Zack inserted the key, turned the lock and slid the box out of its position in the vault. The young manager escorted him into one of several private alcoves in the back of the vault and left him alone with the safety deposit box. Zack put the box down on the small table in the alcove and sat down on one of the two chairs that were on opposite sides of the table.

With some trepidation, he lifted the lid of the box.

Inside, as expected, he found an old-fashioned manila envelope containing the legal title to the
Capri
. Zack set the title aside and moved on to the other items in the box: a bundle of one-hundred credit notes more than a centimeter thick and a standard memory chip. There was also a sealed business envelope that was blank on the outside.

Zack quickly scanned the title for the ship and couldn't find anything that looked out of order. He returned it to the manila envelope. Uncle Marvin must have believed in having a bit of cash in reserve because the stack of hundred-credit notes was brand new and still bore a paper strap labeled "10,000 Credits" holding it together. While that was not a huge amount of money, it would certainly help Zack to get a leg up, unless there were more debts that had to be paid that he didn't know about yet. The memory chip was a standard design and bore no markings.

That left only the sealed letter.

Zack used the old-fashioned letter opener that the table was conveniently equipped with to neatly open the envelope. Inside was a computer-generated letter, several pages long, with Uncle Marvin's hand-written signature at the bottom of the last page. The letter was dated just over a month ago. Holding the pages in both hands, Zack sat back in the chair and read...

My Dearest Zack,

I hope this finds you well. I'm afraid that I may have made a bit of mess of things over the last couple of years. I trust that my old friend Horatio will do his best to sort it all out. First off, I have left you the
Capri
. I have been able to keep her free and clear from any of my other dealings so there are no strings attached. You are free to do what you wish with the ship; keep her or sell her, but be aware that I have made some substantial modifications to her which could make her very useful.

I have been involved with the antiquities trade over the last five years or so and have both made and lost money on various transactions. I have donated a number of important pieces to museums and placed other items in private collections. It has been an exciting and rewarding pastime. That is until my last project. I have gotten involved with something very unusual which could even turn out to be somewhat dangerous. Because of this, I have taken the precaution of encoding my notes regarding the matter. These you will find on the memory chip. It took me some time to come up with an appropriate password to unlock the chip, but the one I have selected is something that only the two of us could know. It has to do with a trip we took together on your fourteenth birthday.

I can’t shake the feeling that this latest project I'm involved in is extremely important. I think that at least a couple of people have been following me and I keep finding that things in my hotel rooms have been moved while I'm away, as if people have been there while I'm gone and are searching for something.

Perhaps this is all a bunch of art-world intrigue and you would be much better off just walking away from the whole thing. I hope you will, at the very least, have a look at the notes on the encoded memory chip.

For the record, you always were my favorite nephew.

Good luck with your life!

Your loving Uncle,

Marvin Pangbourne. (signature).

Still holding the letter in both hands, Zack let his head fall back and let out a deep sigh. 

Uncle Marv's affairs seemed to be getting more and more complicated. He returned the letter to the envelope and stuffed it and the other items into his backpack except for the stack of hundred credit notes. These he deposited into his military bank account immediately after leaving the vault. He couldn't imagine carrying that amount of physical cash. After a short consultation with the bank's self-important assistant manager, during which Zack assured him that he would no longer require the safety deposit box, Zack handed him the key and left the bank.

Zack knew he was going to have to sit down somewhere with his tablet to work with the memory chip and figured the best place and time to do that would be during the evening back in his hotel room. Meantime he decided to contact the man whom Marv's attorney said was interested in buying the
Capri
.

He stopped into a small but inviting-looking coffee shop and got himself a cup of coffee. He took a seat in the almost empty customer area and savored a few sips of the excellent brew before pulling his tablet out of his backpack. He thumbed it to life, intending to do some research on used spaceship prices while he enjoyed his coffee.

Zack's personal tablet was a standard design, similar to the ones that most people carried and used on a daily basis. When the device was not being used as a tablet, it was usually configured into a convenient, compact, flat rectangular block that also functioned as a communication device in its own right. In the folded state, it measured five centimeters wide by ten centimeters tall and was a little under a centimeter thick.

At the operator's request, the unit fanned out into a slate-like tablet that remained ten centimeters wide but now extended four times its former width to a full twenty centimeters in height. Since the extended tablet was made up of four equally-sized panels that were stacked together when the device was in its compact, block form, the final configuration of the extended tablet was a mere two-and-a-half millimeters thick. Through some miracle of technology, the hard, impervious touch screen showed no visible seams after the device was unfolded.

Zack located the information that Horatio Alberts had sent to his tablet regarding the potential buyer and fired off a quick message. Then he began to do some research. The title for his uncle's spaceship indicated that the
Capri
was a Bombardier Mark II Voyager and that she was just over fifty years old. A quick search revealed that this was a versatile ship type that could be, and had been, outfitted in many different ways. Many a wealthy man's yacht or corporate business craft had started life as a Voyager II. Many of them had also been outfitted as or converted to research vessels. Zack also quickly discovered that even a ship as old as the
Capri
was still worth a fair amount of money.

Maybe this business wasn't going to turn out so bad after all!

He glanced up as a couple of attractive, well-dressed, obviously professional women executives came into the shop. As he did so, he noticed a man slouched against the building across the street. The man didn't seem to be doing anything suspicious but in light of the concerns that his uncle had voiced in his letter and the warning he had just received from the lawyer, Zack decided he'd rather be accused of acting a bit paranoid, than to take a chance of getting whacked on the back of the head or something worse, like getting run down by an aircar.

He was almost done with his coffee, watching news coverage on the coffee shop's video screen about some kind of 'mass dream' or 'shared vision' that had everyone abuzz, when his tablet chimed with a message from the man who was interested in the ship. The buyer was a broker located just a few blocks away and would be able to see Zack immediately. Nothing like a relatively small downtown area for convenience. A nonchalant glance at the street told him that the stranger was no longer there. Zack chided himself for overreacting. He finished his coffee and left the little shop, heading for the broker's offices.

Behind him, the man whom Zack had seen across the street, now carrying his jacket folded over his arm and wearing a baseball cap, fell in about fifty meters behind him. Zack, absorbed in the business at hand, didn't notice him.

The broker turned out to be a pleasant enough sort. He was a man in his mid-fifties and what remained of the hair on his mostly bald head appeared to be rapidly going grey. He went by the name of "Honest Henri," and his motto was, "You'll never get a better deal!" It looked like the man dealt mostly with used aircars and such and he had a rather extensive inventory of them on hand in the big lot in front of his offices.

Honest? Henri? Zack wasn't quite sure what to call him.

"Have a seat, Zack," said HH, indicating a chair in front of a shabby and very messy desk. "I guess I know what you want."

"Yes, I might be interested in selling my uncle's spaceship. Ah...what should I call you?"

"Henri, will be fine," replied the broker with a chuckle. He pronounced his name "On-ray," the same way as "honest." "You may be in luck, young fella, I appraised that ship just a few months ago when Marv...was havin' another one of his 'down' periods."

"What do you think she's worth?"

"Ah...now that's a damned good question. I assume you've done some research?"

"Not a lot, but I did find prices on some ships that I thought were roughly equivalent."

Getting right to business, Honest Henri made Zack an offer that was a shockingly small fraction of some of the numbers he had seen during his short research session.

"That's only a fourth of what I was able to find online!" said Zack.

"That's all well and good, Zack, but you'll no doubt notice that those prices are all for ships in the markets near the Central Planets. This far out, there aren't nearly as many buyers and most of the folks out here don't have near as much money. If I buy that ship, it could be months, even a year or more, before I find a buyer. That's a lot of my money sittin' out at the orbital station doing nothin' but generatin' more bills."

Zack looked out the window, trying to decide what to do. He knew that his disappointment was obvious.

"You seem like a nice enough fellow," said Henri, "I'll tell you what, I can offer you another ten percent." Zack gave him an inquiring look. The broker shook his head, "Sorry, Kid, that's the best I can do."

"It just doesn't sound like it's enough."

Honest Henri proved that in spite of appearances and his current behavior, he really was, for the most part, an honest man.

"As I said, Son, I can't take the risk of havin' so much capital tied up. That's why my price has to be so low. She's a good ship, maybe you should just take her into the Central Planets and sell her there. I can almost guarantee that you'll get at least twice what I'm offerin'. Find the right buyer and you could get full value."